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TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 



THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

ROME AND THE 

UNITED STATES 



By 
JAMES HAMILTON LEWIS 




RAND McNALLY & COMPANY 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 






Copyright, 1013, 
By Rand, McNally & Company 



®^e ^anb-^cltallH ^veBst 



Chicago 



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PREFACE 

N THIS book I have proposed to compare con- 
ditions recorded in Roman history with those 
existing in America that should warn, by reason of 
the results at Rome. It is not the purpose of this 
volume to offer a mere textbook or a scholastic essay 
on historical events. It is not the purpose merely to 
record those events which led to the destruction of 
the Roman republic, and with this end our work. 
The main purpose of this book is to compare events as 
they transpired in the one republic and in the other. 

The political history of the Roman republic is 
throughout its whole course a continuous contest 
between radicals and conservatives. The striking re- 
semblances between the basis of the political contro- 
versies of Ancient Rome and the modem political and 
economic problems render it almost impossible for any 
historian to approach the political history of Rome 
entirely free from prejudice. The bias of the histo- 
rian, whether toward the liberal or the conservative 
side in politics, is sure to affect to a greater or less 
degree the pictures which he paints of the events and 
actors in Roman history. To indicate to some extent 
these varying views, and to present to the reader some 
of the ideas of prominent writers on Roman history, a 
number of extracts from the works of other authors 
have been inserted, as occasion demanded, in this work. 
In the majority of cases such an insertion should be 

5 



•6 PREFACE 

understood as an attempt to present all sides of some 
controverted historical question rather than as in- 
dicating the approval by the author of the views 
expressed therein. 

In arranging the perspective of this book, its main 
object has been kept constantly in mind. The im- 
portance of events has been weighed from the stand- 
point of their effect upon the decay and collapse of 
the free political institutions of Rome ; with the result 
that many subjects, to which considerable space would 
be devoted in a general Roman history, have been 
passed over with a mere notice, while other events, 
perhaps of less popular interest, have been treated at 
length. 

I would be false to the first sense of justice did I 
not here acknowledge the aid I have obtained from 
Professor Albert H. Putney, dean of the Webster 
College of Law, Chicago, and a lawyer of the state of 
Illinois at the city of Chicago (my home), who has 
been the principal contributor from whom I have 
received assistance, and much that can be found in 
this book in the nature of real historical data, and of 
the philosophy of reasoning from this data, is due to 
him, and I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness 
and to give full credit for the value of this work. 

James Hamilton Lewis 
United States Senate Chamber, Washington, D. C. 
September 191 3. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface S 

CHAP. 

I. The Two Republics ...... 9 

II. Roman Legislative Assemblies . . 15 

III. The First Great Melting Pot . . 28 

IV. The Early Republic 35 

V. The Period op Foreign Conquest . 71 

VI. The Tribes, the Colonies, and the 

Provinces 89 

VII. The Crisis — The Attempted Reforms 

of the Gracchi 100 

VIII. Marius and Sulla 168 

IX. Pompey 218 

X. Cicero and Catiline 228 

XI. Julius C^sar 238 

XII. Post-Mortem 271 

XIII. The Comparison 286 



THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

ROME 

AND 

THE UNITED STATES 

CHAPTER I 
The Two Republics 

"How like, how unlike, as we view them together." — Holmes. 

TT IS now nearly two thousand years 
since the curtain fell upon the last act in 
the history of the Roman republic. During 
these twenty centuries many other repub- 
lics have flourished and passed away, while, 
in turn, new republics have arisen to take 
the place of the earlier ones; but no other 
fallen republic in the whole course of history 
has attained to the same degree of impor- 
tance, has possessed the same degree of inter- 
est, or has exerted the same influence on the 
history of the world, as did that of Rome. 
The five centuries of republican institutions 
on the banks of the Tiber still remain the 



lo THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

richest quarry to which the student or his- 
torian of republican governments is able to 
resort for his material. 

"History," says Lord Macaulay, "is phil- 
osophy teaching by examples." The most 
practical value of the study of history arises 
from the aid which it can give us in under- 
standing the present and in forecasting the 
future. Bolingbroke, on the "Uses of His- 
tory," commands its study as a protection 
against the unexpected. The main purpose 
of any American, who to-day studies the 
history of the greatest republic of the ancient 
world, should be to discover whether or not 
the story of the rise and fall of that govern- 
ment teaches any lessons which might be of 
value to the American of to-day; whether 
the evils which were the causes of the over- 
throw of the Roman republic find any coun- 
terpart in the problems which agitate our 
own country. 

One of the greatest of American orators, 
in urging Americans to draw their historical 
lessons from the history of their own coun- 
try, says that "when we go back into ancient 
history, we are bewildered by the differences 
of manners and institutions"; but sometimes 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES n 

it is with the earliest of nations that the 
most striking comparisons may be made, and 
from their history that the greatest lessons 
may be learned. 

The truth is that the progress of mankind, 
during that small fragment of the period of 
its existence upon this earth which we are 
permitted to see by the light of history, has 
been very uneven in the extent of its advances 
along the different lines of human progress. 
In the fields of scientific discovery and of 
material results htiman achievements, espe- 
cially during the past century, have reached 
almost into the realm of the marvelous; but 
in many other fields — those relating to 
htiman reason, to knowledge of the human 
mind, to the relation between man and man, 
and to the science of government — human 
progress has been so slight that man's efforts 
in these directions must still receive the ver- 
dict of failiu*e. 

The reason for this great discrepancy is 
perhaps not difficult to discover. It is easy 
for the mass of mankind to accept and receive 
the benefits which come to them from the 
struggles and mental efforts of the few 
intellectual giants whom the human race 



12 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

from time to time produces; but all this 
takes place with very little change in the 
minds or emotions of the mass of humanity. 

As, for example, the pages of Homer are 
studied, it is hard to say whether the strong- 
est impression left upon the mind of the 
reader is that of the vast difference between 
the external life of that period and of the 
twentieth century, or that of the striking 
similarity between the qualities and emotions 
of the characters in these epics and of the 
men and women of to-day. 

In the field of the material world any com- 
parison between the existing conditions in the 
United States to-day and the conditions in 
any ancient country could hardly be of any 
particular value; except, perhaps, to indicate 
the great distance which has been trav- 
eled. In the field of government and poli- 
tics, however, the most valuable comparison 
which it is possible to make with existing 
conditions in the United States is not with 
the present conditions in any modern coun- 
try, nor is it with conditions of an earlier 
age in any Anglo-Saxon or even Teutonic 
country. The greatest resemblance to the 
existing conditions in the United States, both 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 13 

as to the character of her poHtics and the 
nature of the problems which confront her, 
is to be found in the great Roman repubHc 
of two thousand years ago. 

In studying the decHne and fall of the 
Roman republic it will appear that this 
result was most directly brought about by 
the three following causes: 

I. Long before the time when Rome had 
attained to the height of her power, great 
inequalities of wealth had arisen between 
the different strata of the Roman citizens; 
the prosperity which came to Rome as a 
result of her conquests was not distributed 
among her whole citizen body. Indeed, while 
the wealth of the community as a whole was 
rapidly increasing, the wealth of the great 
mass of the citizens was rapidly decreasing, 
not only relatively but even absolutely. 
The acute stage of the contest between the 
rich and the poor arose immediately after 
the conclusion of the long contest between 
patricians and plebeians, and at the time 
when, theoretically, all political distinctions 
and privileges between citizens had disap- 
peared. Yet, in fact, the suffrage was then 
limited to the free citizen — the smallest 



14 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

class of the humble or toiling numbers. 

2. The influence of a large and constantly 
increasing class of demagogues, possessed of 
knowledge of human nature and endowed with 
skill in the management of men, yet entirely 
lacking in principle, patriotism, or any sense 
of public obligation. These wrought upon 
a mob of unqualified and reckless voters, 
who had nothing to lose and were more 
anxious for immediate personal benefit than 
for the gradual but permanent amelioration 
of the hardships of the class to which they 
belonged. 

3. The absence of any system of repre- 
sentative organization in the Roman govern- 
ment. 

The first two of these evils are to be found 
in the American republic of to-day as well as 
in the Roman republic of the past; the last 
of the three was a disadvantage suffered by 
Rome but outgrown by the modern republics. 
This last evil will be treated by itself in the 
succeeding chapter, while the two former will 
be shown in the remainder of the voltime as 
the political history of Rome is outlined. 



CHAPTER II 
Roman Legislative Assemblies 

TN ONE important respect in the manage- 
ment of their poHtical affairs, the citi- 
zens of the Roman repubHc occupied a most 
disadvantageous position in comparison with 
the citizens of any modern republic. The 
greatest defect in the poHtical organization 
of Rome, as of all other ancient republics, 
lay in the utter absence of representative 
legislative assemblies. The want of such 
institutions, in the absence of all the other 
causes of disruption, might of itself have 
been sufficient to have caused the downfall 
of the Roman republic. 

The invention and development of such 
representative assemblies has been the great- 
est contribution which the Anglo-Saxon race 
has made to the political progress of the world. 
It is largely the existence of such bodies 
which renders practical the continued exist- 
ence of modern republics, with jurisdiction 
over extended areas. 

The Roman legislative bodies were, through- 
out the 'whole period of Roman history, 

15 



i6 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

popular assemblies, — bodies of a character 
well adapted for the government of the 
community when Rome was a mere city- 
republic on the Tiber, but entirely inade- 
quate to meet existing conditions when the 
Roman territories had been extended far 
beyond the confines of Latitmi and even 
beyond the shores of the Italian peninsula. 

The system of Roman popular assemblies 
was so complicated, and these assemblies 
were so closely connected with every phase 
and every important epoch in Roman political 
history, that it seems advisable to stop at 
the outset and give a brief description of 
each of these assemblies; of the manner in 
which they were constituted; of their origin; 
and of the scope of their respective powers. 

The oldest of these popular assemblies 
was the comitia curiata, which for a con- 
siderable period was the only body in Rome 
with the power to enact laws. This assem- 
bly was based upon the original division 
of the people into gentes and curicB, and was 
throughout its history a distinctively patri- 
cian body. The force of the contest for a 
share in political power, waged by the ple- 
beians, took in the main the direction of 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 17 

stripping the comitia curiata of its power 
instead of securing for the plebeians the right 
of membership in this assembly. 

After the creation of the comitia centuriata 
the powers of the older comitia rapidly- 
declined, and were in the main limited to 
the control of certain portions of the state 
religion; particularly those religious formali- 
ties connected with elections, legislation, or 
the investure of military leaders with the 
imperium. At a still later time, the comitia 
curiata ceased to meet at all, and was 
merely considered as being represented by 
the lictors. 

The two important assemblies of the peo- 
ple during the period of the history of the 
Roman republic were the comitia centuriata 
and the comitia tributa. The comitia cen- 
turiata came into existence during the period 
which lies on the border line between mythol- 
ogy and history. In the legendary history 
of the Roman kingdom the creation of this 
assembly is given as one of the reforms of 
Servius TuUius. However this may be, it 
was undoubtedly in existence (although not 
in the exact form which it later acquired) 
as early as the sixth century before Christ. 



i8 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

This assembly was reorganized some time 
before the Punic Wars. In its final form the 
tribal division was taken as the primary 
division of the people; each tribe was divided 
into five classes, according to the wealth 
of the citizens, and each class into two cen- 
turies, one century in each class consisting 
of seniores, or men above forty-five years of 
age, and one consisting of juniores, or men 
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. 
The ten centuries from each of the tribes 
made a total of three hundred fifty centuries, 
to whom were added eighteen centuries of 
knights, making a total of three hundred 
sixty-eight centuries. Every question sub- 
mitted to the comitia centuriata was decided 
by the vote of a majority of centuries. Al- 
though all freemen had the right to vote 
in this assembly, the power of the richer 
classes was disproportionately great. This 
was secured by assigning to the five classes, 
into which each tribe was divided, a very 
disproportionate number of citizens. The 
first class, to which only the richest citizens 
were admitted, was very small in size, while 
the fifth (and lowest) class was probably 
more ntimerous than the other four classes 
combined. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 19 

The comitia centuriata was originally an 
assembly of the Roman citizens in the form 
of an army, and the divisions into classes 
was based upon the kind of equipment with 
which each soldier was able to provide him- 
self. The eighteen centuries of knights rep- 
resented the cavalry of the army. These 
centuries of knights possessed the right of 
having their votes taken first, which con- 
stituted another advantage for the wealthy 
classes. In 241 B.C. the knights were de- 
prived of their right of voting first, but this 
privilege was given to the centuries of the 
first rank, assigned by lot. 

The comitia tributa, or assembly of the 
tribes, first met in 489 B.C., it being convened 
by the Senate at that time to sit in judgment 
upon a patrician, Coriolanus, the responsi- 
bility for whose fate the Senate desired to 
throw upon the plebeians. This assembly 
was originally a strictly plebeian body, and 
its original authority was limited to the 
administration of the business of the plebeian 
order. The class character of the comitia 
tributa is indicated by its original name 
— concilium trihutum plehis, the word conci- 
lium indicating a conference of a certain 



20 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

part of the people rather than a legislative 
assembly of the whole people. 

It woiild be hard to say whether it was the 
increased power of the tribunes which devel- 
oped the authority of the comitia tributa, or 
whether it was the increased power of the 
comitia tributa which first gave to the 
tribunes the vast power which they were 
ultimately able to exercise in Rome. How- 
ever this may be, the fact is evident that the 
power of the comitia tributa and of the trib- 
unes rose together. At a later date, mem- 
bership in the comitia tributa was not limited 
to the plebeians, but the influence of the 
patricians in this assembly was always in- 
considerable and they generally absented 
themselves from its meetings. Although the 
wealthy classes had no predominating influ- 
ence in the comitia tributa, its decision upon 
any question was far from being, necessarily, 
the decision of the majority. Measures sub- 
mitted to the comitia tributa were carried 
or defeated by the vote of the majority of 
the tribes, and the numbers enrolled in 
each tribe were very unequal, all the inhab- 
itants of the city of Rome being enrolled 
into four tribes, and a very disproportionate 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 21 

power being thus given to the rural voters. 

The meetings of the comitia tributa were 
generally presided over by a tribune, although 
sometimes by one of the consuls. At first 
the laws passed by the comitia tributa were 
required to be confirmed by a vote of the 
comitia centuriata, but this requirement was 
abolished in 339 B.C. by the Publilian and 
Horatian laws. The provisions of these laws 
were reaffirmed by the Hortensian laws in 
286 B.C.; and it is certain that at least from 
this date the full validity of a law passed by 
the comitia tributa was never questioned. 

In the comitia centuriata and the comitia 
tributa we see the anomalous condition of 
two independent law-making assemblies; and 
as there was no division between them of the 
field of legislation, it is hard to see how, even 
with the controlling influence of the Senate, 
conflicts between the two were so generally 
avoided. So completely were the two comitiae 
on an equality as to the validity of the laws 
enacted by each that the records generally 
fail to show by which assembly any particular 
law was passed, but this can generally be 
ascertained by looking at the name of the 
proposer of the law. If a tribime appears as 



22 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

the proposer of the law it was passed by the 
comitia tributa; but if the proposer was a 
consul, praetor, or dictator, the law was the 
work of the comitia centuriata. 

The powers of the two comitiae as to the 
election of officers were differentiated. The 
comitia centuriata, at all stages in the history 
of the Roman republic, possessed the right 
of electing the highest officers of the republic 
— the consuls, praetors, and censors. The 
comitia tributa originally possessed the right 
of electing only the tribunes and the plebeian 
sediles; at a later period they elected also the 
curule aediles, the quaestors, the majority of 
the legionary tribunes, and all the inferior 
officers of state. The comitia tributa, in the 
later days of the republic, secured an indirect 
control over the election of the higher officers 
also, since the adoption of the legal principle 
that ail Romans who sought the highest 
honors of the state must pass through a regu- 
lar gradation of offices rendered it necessary 
for the comitia centuriata to choose as con- 
suls and praetors men who had previously 
been chosen by the comitia tributa as quaes- 
tors and aediles. It must be remembered, 
however, that the law relative to the order 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 23 

in which the various offices must be held was 
of a directory rather than a mandatory char- 
acter; while in the main obeyed, it was, 
nevertheless, frequently violated. 

The various public offices here referred to 
will be discussed in the later chapters as each 
office first comes into existence in Roman 
history. It remains at this time to speak of 
the organization, powers, and authority of 
the Roman Senate, particularly as to its con- 
trol over the work of the popular assemblies. 

The extent of the power of the Senate 
over legislation varied greatly in different 
periods of Roman history, and these differ- 
ences were caused more by the existing polit- 
ical conditions, and by the relative strength 
of the aristocratic and popular parties in 
Rome, than by any express changes by legis- 
lation. 

At the very outset of Roman history we see 
the Senate existing as an aristocratic body, 
embodying in itself both the oligarchical prin- 
ciples upon which the Roman government 
was based, and also the patriarchal basis 
upon which the Roman family organization 
and later the organization of the Roman 
state itself had been built. 



24 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Originally, each of the three Roman tribes 
was divided into ten gentes, each gens into 
ten curiae, and each curia, besides consti- 
tuting one of the units in the comitia curiata, 
furnished one member of the Roman Senate. 
The Senate continued after the organization 
by curi^ had become obsolete. Member- 
ship in the Senate was at all periods for 
life, but did not descend from father to son. 
Vacancies in the Senate were filled by appoint- 
ment, these appointments being made first 
by the kings, later by the consuls, and finally 
by the censors. As the censors were chosen 
only once in five years, vacancies in the Senate 
were filled only at such intervals. The 
aristocratic party in Rome, by keeping con- 
trol of the office of censor, was able to per- 
petuate their majority in the Senate. In 
filling such vacancies, preference was given 
to those who had held some of the higher 
offices during the preceding five-year-period. 
Many members of the Senate had held the 
office of consul ; many more hoped to hold it 
in the future. All members of the Senate, 
with few exceptions, had held some civic 
office, and were men of property and of ma- 
ture age. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 25 

All the dignity of Rome and of the Roman 
government centered in the Roman Senate. 
The minister of Pyrrhus described this body 
as "an assembly of kings," and it might well 
have aroused the surprise and admiration of 
a foreign ambassador, as nowhere else in 
the world at that time was it possible to find 
such an assembly, either from the standpoint 
of the character of the body itself or of the 
qualifications of its members. 

At an early period no law could be pre- 
sented before the comitia centuriata or the 
comitia tributa without having been previ- 
ously approved by the Senate, and after the 
passage of the act, either by the comitia cen- 
turiata or the comitia tributa, it must be 
promulgated by the Senate before it went 
into effect. The Senate, therefore, was never 
possessed of a direct general power of legis- 
lation, but had in the fullest degree both the 
power of initiating legislation and of vetoing 
it. At a later period the control of the Senate 
over legislation became theoretically less, but 
practically greater. 

By the Publilian Law (339 B.C.) the con- 
trol of the Senate over the comitia centuriata 
was reduced to a mere formality. By this 



26 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

time, however, the officers of the state, the 
tribunes as well as the consuls, had fallen 
completely under the control of the Senate, 
while the comitia tributa, in turn, fell more 
and more under the control of the consuls 
and tribunes respectively. Diu-ing the latter 
period of the republic the Senate practically 
legislated, and gave the bill to one of the 
tribunes (the tribunes were at this time far 
more completely under the control of the 
Senate than were the consuls) to secure the 
mere formality of its passage by the comitia 
tributa. 

The management of foreign affairs was at 
all times exclusively in the hands of the 
Senate, except that the question of declaring 
war or concluding peace must be submitted 
to the vote of the people in one of the popular 
assemblies. The Senate also regulated the 
religious affairs of the Roman state (after 
this power fell from the hands of the comitia 
curiata); assigned consuls and prastors their 
provinces of administration and command; 
fixed the amount of troops to be raised both 
from the Roman citizens and from the Italian 
allies; sent and received ambassadors; con- 
trolled the calendar, adding to or taking away 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 27 

from a year so as to lengthen the term of a 
favorite official or to shorten the term of an 
unpopular one; decreed or refused triumphs 
to Roman generals, and possessed a general 
control over the financial affairs of the state. 



CHAPTER III 
The First Great Melting Pot 

'T^HE variety of things which are able to 
serve as a basis for hiiman vanity- 
are almost unlimited. This holds true as 
well in the case of national vanity as in the 
case of the vanity of the individual. The 
most backward and least attractive of human 
races generally consider themselves superior 
to the rest of mankind, and too often on 
account of the peculiarities which, in the 
minds of others, are the most convincing 
proofs of their inferiority. Even among the 
more advanced races of mankind great pride 
is often manifested in attributes which, prop- 
erly viewed, are rather a disgrace, or at least 
a detriment to the race. 

Few things in the world are held in greater 
respect, by the great masses of men, than a 
long line of ancestry of unmixed blood. It 
seems to be generally felt that the purity of 
any race, that is, its freedom from inter- 
breeding with outsiders, is a matter of 
credit. The lesson of history, however, shows 
that purity of blood in any nation is an 

28 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 29 

evidence of, or perhaps rather cause of, 
degeneracy and decay, and that the great 
nations of history have been the cosmopoHtan 
races, the races of mixed descent and hybrid 
ancestry. If it be thought that the Jewish 
people are an exception to this, let it be 
recalled that the Jews are a mixed people, 
originally of many conflicting tribes, and 
later continually mixed with other races. 

In the pages of ancient history Rome 
stands out as the first great cosmopolitan 
race, or at least the first mixed race, in the 
creation of which we are able to watch the 
melting pot in full operation. 

Three thousand years ago the Italian penin- 
sula presented a veritable medley of races. 
In the south and along the eastern coast 
were found the cities and colonies founded 
by the two streams of immigration from the 
neighboring peninsula across the Adriatic — 
the Pelasgian and the Greek. In the center 
of Italy were to be found the various branches 
of the Oscan, Umbrian, and Sabellian races. 
Farther to the north was the country of the 
Latins. Etruscans and Gauls dwelt between 
Latiimi and the Alps. It was only at a 
much later time that Cisalpine Gaul began 
to be considered a part of Italy. 



30 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

In its earliest days Rome, while possessing 
many features in common with the other 
Italian cities, presented at the same time 
many differences. 

"The unfavorable character of the site renders it 
hard to understand how the city could so early attain 
its prominent position in Latium. The soil is unfav- 
orable to the growth of fig or vine, and in addition to 
the want of good water-springs, swamps are caused 
by the frequent inundations of the Tiber. Moreover, 
it was confined in all land directions by powerful 
cities. But all these disadvantages were more than 
compensated by the unfettered command it had of 
both banks of the Tiber down to the mouth of the 
river. The fact that the clan of the Romilii was set- 
tled on the right bank from time immemorial, and 
that there lay the grove of the creative goddess Dea 
Dia, and the primitive seat of the Arval festival and 
Arval brotherhood, proves that the original territory 
of Rome comprehended Janiculimi and Ostia, which 
afterwards fell into the hands of the Etruscans. Not 
only did this position on both banks of the Tiber place 
in Rome's hands all the traffic of Latium, but, as the 
Tiber was the natural barrier against northern invaders, 
Rome became the maritime frontier fortress of Latium. 
Again, the situation acted in two ways: Firstly, it 
brought Rome into commercial relations with the outer 
world, cemented her alliance with Casre, and taught 
her the importance of building bridges. Secondly, it 
caused the Roman canton to become united in the city 
itself far earlier than was the case with other Latin 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 31 

communities. And thus, though Latium was a strictly 
agricultural country, Rome was a center of commerce; 
and this commercial position stamped its peculiar 
mark on the Roman character, distinguishing them 
from the rest of the Latins and Italians, as the citizen 
is distinguished from the rustic. Not, indeed, that 
the Roman neglected his farm, or ceased to regard it 
as his home; but the unwholesome air of the Cam- 
pagna tended to make him withdraw to the more 
healthful city hills; and from early times by the side 
of the Roman farmer arose a non-agricultural popu- 
lation, composed partly of foreigners and partly of 
natives, which tended to develop urban lif e. ' ' (Momm- 
sen's History oj Rome.) 

It was, therefore, as a cosmopolitan, com- 
mercial city that the Romans first came into 
prominence. The early population was com- 
posed of mixed Etruscan and Latin stock, to 
which representatives of every Italian tribe 
and of the Greeks were soon added. By the 
beginning of the truly historical times the 
Romans had become merged into one race, 
representing the combined product of the 
races of Italy. It was this fact, very largely, 
which contributed to her success over the 
purer (ethnologically) races which surrounded 
her. 

There were two great divisions of the 
melting-pot process at Rome; the first, that 



32 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

existing during the days of the kingdom and 
of the eariy repubHc; the second, that of the 
later republic and the empire. During the 
first period the process of intermixture, as 
has been said, was between the different 
races of Italy; within the second period Rome 
became the center of the civilized world, and 
her population included representatives of 
all the known races of mankind. 

In no other despotism in the history of 
the world is there to be found so little racial 
or class distinction as in the Roman empire. 
Such distinctions were never able to exist at 
Rome during any portion of her history. 
The permanent privileged classes were those 
possessed of wealth, or of military power, 
and the descendants of both the conquerors 
and the conquered of one epoch would be 
found in the next indiscriminately divided 
among the exploiters and the exploited of 
the times. 

The patricians, the descendants of the 
early settlers of Rome, were unable to main- 
tain their special caste privileges, and were 
compelled to admit the plebeians to equal 
political rights and privileges. Class dis- 
tinction remained in as marked a degree as 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 33 

ever at Rome, but the distinction was now 
between rich and poor, and the rich plebeian 
took equal rank with the rich patrician. Nor 
were the united Roman orders strong enough 
to preserve a monopoly of political privileges 
for Romans when the territory of Rome was 
extended over the Italian peninsula. It was 
found necessary to extend the franchise first 
to the residents of Latium and later to those 
of the other portions of Italy. 

More remarkable still were the conditions 
which we find after the establishment of the 
empire and the extension of Roman terri- 
tory around the shores of the Mediterranean 
Sea. There were no royal house, no heredi- 
tary nobility, and few special privileges left 
for the inhabitants of Rome. The distinc- 
tions between rich and poor were never more 
galling; hut high birth conferred no great 
advantage, and the lowest born could rise to 
the highest posts of honor. The ponderous 
weight of the empire ground out racial and 
caste distinctions and welded together all the 
heterogeneous mass. The provinces became 
Romanized, and the population of Rome 
became a mixture of all the races of the 
provinces. Of how little importance Rome 



34 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

was to the later empire is shown by the 
removal of the seat of the empire by Con- 
stantino to Constantinople, and the continued 
existence of an empire calling itself Roman 
for more than a thousand years after Rome 
had ceased to constitute a part of such empire. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Early Republic 

'npHE first epoch of the Roman republic 
-■■ is that extending from the overthrow 
of the kings, about 509 B.C., to the passage 
of the Licinian Laws in 367 B.C. The his- 
tory of this century and a half at Rome is 
primarily the history of internal strife and 
class antagonisms. During these early days 
the progress made by the republic toward 
the expansion of its territories or the 
extension of its foreign influence was in- 
appreciable. 

Rome, during these days, was contending 
on a position of near equality with the neigh- 
boring cities of Latium and Etruria. Twice 
during this period the independence, perhaps 
the very existence, of the city was seriously 
threatened. 

The war against the Etruscans, which 
followed immediately upon the expulsion of 
the last of the Tarquin kings, resulted so 
unfavorably to Rome that not only was her 
territory considerably reduced in size but 
even the subjugation of Rome itself might 

35 



36 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

probably have been accomplished but for 
the forbearance of her victorious opponents. 

Later, in 390 B.C., the capture and sack of 
Rome by the Gauls nearly proved the death- 
blow of the Roman republic. The internal 
dissensions of this period were mainly respon- 
sible for the lack of military success. Al- 
though it is true that the history of early 
Rome, unlike the histories of the various 
early Grecian states, records few instances 
where hatred or bitterness arising from politi- 
cal defeat induced a citizen to turn traitor 
to his country, and although the approach 
of a foreign foe was generally sufficient to 
bring about a truce in Roman political 
hostilities and the union of all factions in 
the city against the common national enemy, 
still it must be remembered that the amount 
of energy possessed by a community is 
limited. When the all-absorbing questions 
agitating a people are those relative to 
internal political contests, the energies of 
the ablest men of each generation are spent 
mainly in political contests instead of being 
exerted for the common welfare of the 
community. 

The influence which the internal dissensions 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 37 

at Rome must have exerted on her military- 
success is shown by a comparison of the 
military history of the Roman republic prior 
to 367 B.C. with the wonderful career of 
conquest which the Roman republic entered 
into immediately after the passage of the 
Licinian Act. This act, although producing 
a partial and temporary cessation of class 
contests at Rome, nevertheless sufficiently 
healed the internal wounds of the state to 
enable it to rapidly advance from a city- 
republic to a world power. 

"The results of this great change were singtilarly 
happy and glorious. Two centuries of prosperity, 
harmony, and victory followed the reconciliation of 
the orders. Men who remembered Rome engaged in 
waging petty wars almost within sight of the Capitol 
lived to see her the mistress of Italy. While the dis- 
abilities of the plebeians continued, she was scarcely 
able to maintain her ground against the Volscians and 
Hemicans. When those disabilities were removed, 
she rapidly became more than a match for Carthage 
and Macedon." (Macaulay.) 

The republic created at Rome in the 
course of the sixth century before Christ 
was distinctively an undemocratic republic. 
The benefits to the plebeians resulting from 
the overthrow of the kingdom were of slight, 



38 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

if any importance. The political power of 
the state remained almost entirely in the 
hands of the patricians, and the right to hold 
office was restricted to the members of this 
caste. At this time the members of the 
patrician order were perhaps not very much 
inferior in niimbers to the plebeian order; 
but the discrepancy between the numbers of 
the two orders so rapidly increased that by 
the beginning of the fourth century before 
Christ the government of Rome had become 
practically that of an oligarchy. 

In the latter days of the republic, in the 
contest which resulted in the overthrow of 
the republic, the basic reasons for the struggle 
were of an economic rather than a political 
character. In the period now under discus- 
sion the political element predominated in 
the class contests, although various elements 
of disagreement were to be found existing 
side by side. 

"Three distinct movements agitated the commtm^ 
ity. The first proceeded from the body of full citi- 
zens, and was confined to it ; its object was to limit and 
lessen the life-power of the single president or king; 
in all such movements at Rome, from the time of the 
Tarquins to that of the Gracchi, there was no attempt 
to assert the rights of the individual at the expense of 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 39 

the state, nor to limit the power of the state, but only 
that of its magistrates. The second was the demand 
for equality of political privileges, and was the cause 
of bitter struggles between the full burgesses and those, 
whether plebeians, freedmen, Latins, or Italians, who 
keenly resented their political inequality. The third 
movement was an equally prolific source of trouble in 
Roman history; it arose from the embittered relations 
between landholders and those who had either lost 
possession of their farms, or, as was the case with 
many small farmers, held possession at the mercy of 
the capitalist or landlord. These three movements 
must be clearly grasped, as upon them hinges 
the internal history of Rome. Although often 
intertwined and confused with one another, they 
were, nevertheless, essentially and fundamentally 
distinct. The natural outcome of the first was the 
abolition of the monarchy — a result which we find 
everywhere, alike in Greek and Italian states, and 
which seems to have been a certain evolution of 
the form of constitution peculiar to both peoples." 
(Mommsen.) 

The overthrow of the monarchy was accom- 
plished quickly and effectively. Unlike the 
case in most countries, the monarchy once 
overthrown, there was no attempt for nearly 
five centuries to reestablish it. The word 
"king" was regarded with such hatred that 
the mere accusation made against any public 
leader that he was seeking to make himself 



40 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

king was generally sufficient to utterly de- 
stroy his influence, even when such charges 
were unfounded and unsupported by evidence. 

The men who established the new form of 
government created after the expulsion of 
Tarquinius adopted the theory of political 
checks and balances which we afterwards 
find exerting such a strong influence upon 
the framers of our American Constitution. 
It was necessary that at least a part of the 
powers formerly exercised by the king should 
be intrusted to some official under the new 
r6gime. The greatest efforts, however, were 
made to render it impossible for any Roman 
official to use the governmental powers 
granted him in such a manner as to secure 
for himself the kingly office. The mere pro- 
vision that the highest official in the govern- 
ment should be elected, rather than succeed 
to the office by right of descent, was rightly 
judged to be by itself an insufficient pro- 
tection against the seizure of supreme power 
by some Roman tyrant. 

A stronger safeguard was found in the 
division of the highest power in the state 
between two officials, who later came to be 
known as consuls. (The officers afterwards 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 41 

known as consuls were for a considerable 
period known as praetors; after the term 
consul came into use the name praetor at a 
still later period was given to the possessor of 
a new office created shortly after the passage 
of the Licinian Act.) The kingly power, or 
that part of it not absolutely abolished or 
given to the religious officials, was vested 
jointly in the two consuls, each possessing 
the full right to exercise all the functions of 
the office. Under this division of power each 
consul was considered a most effective check 
upon any ambition for a crown which might 
be possessed by the other. 

Another safeguard, a safeguard which unfor- 
tunately has recently been too much disre- 
garded in the United States, consisted in the 
short term of office prescribed by the new 
law, the consuls and other Roman officials 
being elected for a term of one year only. 

While, as has been said, the consuls retained 
in general all the former powers of the king, 
still in some respects these powers were 
curtailed : 

I. By the Valerian Law of 509 B.C. each 
person condemned by the consul to capital 
or corporal punishment was entitled to an 



42 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

appeal as a matter of right. It had previ- 
ously been optional with the king whether 
to grant an appeal. 

2. The consuls never possessed the various 
pecuniary rights of the kings, such as that of 
having the fields cultivated by the citizens, 

3. The qusestors, who had previously been 
appointed or not by the king himself, as he 
saw fit, now became regular state officials. 

4. The religious duties and powers of the 
king did not pass to the consul. The highest 
religious officer of the state, the pontifex 
maximus, was from this time on elected by 
the Pontifical College. The various colleges 
of priests (all of whom had formerly been 
appointed by the king) now filled up vacancies 
in their own numbers. Other religious offi- 
cers were appointed by the pontifex maxi- 
mus. On account of the close connection 
between the Roman religion and the Roman 
government, the pontifex maximus became 
a strong political power in the cityi By the 
power of this officer and his associates to 
hold the auspices and regulate the calendar, 
they were enabled to prevent or permit the 
holding of the public assemblies, extend or 
decrease the term of office of public officials, 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 43 

and exercise a greater or less influence on 
almost every public question or proceeding. 

5. The insignia and marks of dignity per- 
mitted to the consul were of a less imposing 
character than those previously granted to 
the king. While the king had been accom- 
panied by twenty-four lictors, the consul was 
permitted only twelve, and the axes were 
taken away. While the king had worn the 
purple robe, the consul wore merely the 
ordinary Roman toga with a purple border. 
The royal chariot of the king did not descend 
to the consul, who was obliged to travel on 
foot within the limits of the city, 

6. There had been no provision in the 
Roman law for any redress for a wrong done 
by the king, but the consul, upon the ter- 
mination of his year of office, stepped down 
at once into the mass of the citizens and could 
at any time be punished for any malfeasance 
during his official life. 

7. An indirect restriction of the powers 
of the consuls arose from the increased dig- 
nity and authority of the Senate. The 
change in this respect, however, was practical 
rather than theoretical. According to the 
strict form of the law the Senate still bore 



44 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

the same relation to the consuls that they 
had previously borne to the king. The 
Senate was still nothing more than an advisory- 
body, and all vacancies among the senators 
were filled by appointments made by the 
consuls. The increased importance of the 
Senate arose out of the advantage which an 
official holding office for life always possesses 
over a superior officer holding office for only 
a brief term. In the present day it frequently 
happens that a political appointee at the 
head of a department or bureau, with the 
workings of which he is not familiar, finds 
himself compelled to rely almost implicitly 
upon some subordinate official whose working 
life has been spent in that office. 

The short term of a constd and the life 
term of the members of the Senate thus 
tended to secure to this body an ever increas- 
ing influence. It was seldom that any seri- 
ous conflict arose between the consul and the 
Senate. The consuls were men who were 
already senators or who expected to become 
such, while of the senators, many had held 
the office of consul and many more hoped to 
hold it in the future. 

This curtailment of the kingly power and 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 45 

the division of the powers which remained 
between two consuls of equal rank, while it 
secured the protection of the citizens from 
the danger of a new monarchy, strongly- 
hindered vigor and unity of action in the 
prosecution of any enterprise. There were 
times, therefore, during the succeeding centur- 
ies in the life of Rome, when to meet tempo- 
rary emergencies a stronger and undivided rule 
was necessary. To meet this need a new 
official was created — the dictator — who 
might be nominated by one of the consuls 
upon the authorization of the Senate and who, 
during the term of his office, which could not 
exceed six months, possessed and exercised 
almost absolute authority at Rome, and 
superseded all the other officials in their 
duties. 

The original intention was that such an 
official should be appointed only in cases of 
military necessity, but later this office was 
frequently created to aid the patricians in 
their contests with the plebeians. Only the 
patricians were eligible for any of the newly 
created offices. The Senate was composed 
exclusively of this order, and it has already 
been explained, in Chapter II, how, through 



46 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

the expedient of putting more Roman citizens 
in some centuries than in the others, the 
patricians were able to control the vote of 
the majority of the centuries in the comitia 
centuriata. 

It is thus apparent that the mere overthrow 
of the kings at Rome had accomplished little 
for the ordinary Roman citizen. In fact, 
the rule of a single monarch is often more 
beneficial to the poorer classes of a community 
than the rule of a favored class. The estab- 
lishment of a republic, however, had elimi- 
nated one political element, and cleared the 
stage for the contest between the patricians 
and plebeians. 

That the economic condition of the poorer 
classes in Rome changed for the worse after 
the institution of the republic is certain. 
It was for the interest of the early Roman 
kings to favor and protect the small Roman 
farmers, both for military and economic 
reasons. While the permanent interests of 
the patricians would have been promoted by 
the encouragement of this class, their tem- 
porary selfish interests called for the destruc- 
tion of the Roman middle class, primarily 
the middle agricultural class, and the division 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 47 

of all Roman inhabitants into a small aris- 
tocracy on the one hand and a large prole- 
tariat on the other. 

The two forms of exactions which fell the 
heaviest upon the Roman poorer classes were 
the barbarous laws against debtors and the 
dishonest administration of the public leaders. 
The desperate condition of the debtors at 
Rome at this time was a result of a nimiber of 
different causes, including the high rate of 
interest, the right of the creditor to sell the 
debtor into slavery if the debt were not paid, 
the policy of the patrician creditors to demand 
the last pound of flesh in all their transactions, 
and the conditions which existed in Rome at 
this time which compelled many small land- 
owners, against their wish and without any 
fault of their own, to become borrowers of 
money. 

One harsh feature of this condition was the 
fact that it was the military service, which 
as Roman citizens they were compelled to 
render to the state, that more often than 
any other cause compelled the plebeians to 
borrow money and thus ultimately drove 
them to their ruin. For example, a small 
R-cman farmer, through absence from his 



48 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

home on military service for the state, might 
lose his crop for the year. To support him- 
self and his family until the next harvest, 
and to supply the means for the planting of 
the next year's crop, he would be obliged to 
borrow money, which, under the exorbitant 
rates of interest, soon reached an amount 
out of proportion to the original loan. Per- 
haps a second campaign would deprive him of 
the means of returning the loan, and his lands 
would be taken from him and he himself sold 
into slavery. As a final blow, the unfortu- 
nate plebeian saw the lands which had been 
won for the state by armies composed of his 
fellow plebeians reserved entirely for the use 
of the favored patrician order. 

No more pernicious and unfair system 
could have been evolved than that which 
governed the management of the Roman 
public lands in the very first years of the 
republic. The earlier policy, under the kings, 
had been to divide the public land of the 
state into small allotments and to distribute 
it among those citizens of the state who most 
needed it. With the republic this policy 
ceased, and the public lands were nominally 
retained in the public ownership, but in 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 49 

reality were let out on leases to the patricians 
and a few favored men among the plebeians. 

In theory the state retained the right to 
take back the land at any time and to receive 
a rent from the lessee; but in practice both 
these rights were disregarded. The lands 
held in this manner by the patricians were 
soon considered by them as much their own 
property as those to which they held the 
legal title, and were devised and pledged by 
their owners in substantially the same man- 
ner as any other land. The collection of the 
rent was soon abandoned; and not only 
this, but the land being in theory state land, 
the lessee (who was supposed to, but did not, 
pay rent) was not liable to pay taxes on this 
land. 

The final working out of this matter may 
be stimmed up by saying that the poorer 
class of the plebeians furnished most of the 
soldiers for the campaign, stood most of the 
expense, suffered nearly all the losses both 
of life and property, were excluded from any 
share in the land captured in the war, and as 
a culmination saw their taxes yearly increased 
on account of the fact that the patricians, who 
monopolized the public land, succeeded in 



so THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

dodging the payment of rent and in evading 
the payment of taxes. 

It was these conditions which brought 
about the remarkable spectacle of what may 
be well designated the first recorded strike in 
history — a strike in the Roman army. In 
495 B.C. the Roman citizens were summoned 
to take the field for another military cam- 
paign. They refused to obey. One of the 
consuls, Publius Servilius, however, induced 
them to make the campaign by suspending 
some of the laws bearing most heavily upon 
the poor and by releasing all persons in 
prison for debt. But hardly had the army 
returned from a victorious campaign than the 
other consul, Appius Claudius, as a reward 
for their victory began to enforce the debtor 
laws with extraordinary severity. 

Once more, in the following year, the 
plebeians were induced to take the field, 
mainly on account of the popularity of the 
dictator appointed for the management of 
this campaign, Marius Valerius, and his 
promise that upon the termination of the 
campaign permanent reforms would be made 
in the law. Again the Roman army was vic- 
torious, and again the patricians broke faith 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 51 

with the plebeians and refused to carry out 
their promised reforms. 

The next scene in this conflict is one almost 
without parallel, either in ancient or modern 
history. The plebeians, disgusted by the 
selfishness and perfidy of the patricians, 
determined to abandon Rome to the patrician 
order and to found a new city for themselves 
upon the ''Sacred Mount," a hill situated 
between the Tiber and the Anio. The patri- 
cians, thunderstruck by this unexpected move- 
ment, and being far more in need of the 
plebeians than the plebeians were of them, 
immediately made sufficient concessions to 
the plebeians to induce them to return to 
Rome. 

Some of the concessions made at this 
time related to temporary provisions for relief 
of debtors; but the great innovation was 
that which estabhshed the office of tribune. 
The character of the office of tribune is 
absolutely unique in the political history of 
the world. The tribunes, elected by the 
people in the comitia tributa, were plebeian 
officers who were at first without any con- 
structive part in the carrying on of the Roman 
government and whose sole duty at the outset 



52 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

was to protect the members of the plebeian 
order from the oppression of the patrician 
officials. This protection was exercised 
mainly through the use of the veto power 
given to the tribunes. Under this power the 
tribunes had the right at any time to put a 
stop to any act either by any of the public 
assemblies, by the Senate, or by any of the 
magistrates. It was a power which, if exer- 
cised to its fullest extent, could put a stop to 
the very carrying on of the government. 

It speaks much for the moderation of the 
Roman tribunes that through all the centuries 
of the Roman republic little serious incon- 
venience was experienced from the use of 
this power. With few and unimportant ex- 
ceptions, it was exercised only in cases where 
the welfare of the plebeians as a class, or of 
some particular plebeian, demanded it. 

The creation of the office of tribune was 
merely one more example of that system of 
checks and balances which played so promi- 
nent a part in the framing of the government 
after the expulsion of the king — a system of 
checks and balances so strikingly resembling 
that in our Federal Constitution. The trib- 
unes were introduced as a protection for 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 53 

the plebeians and an additional restraint 
upon the magistrates. 

While at first the power and duties of the 
tribunes were entirely of a negative nature, 
they gradually acquired an authority of a 
positive character. The tribunes generally 
presided over the comitia tributa and took 
the lead in securing the passage of laws by 
that body. In addition they acquired judi- 
cial powers, and in cases where a plebeian 
had been wronged they could summon any 
citizen, even the consuls, before them, and 
might impose even the death penalty. The 
persons of the tribunes were declared invio- 
lable, and any one who attacked them was 
thought to be accursed. The number of 
the tribunes was at first two, but was later 
increased to five and still later to ten.^ '\- 

The second great victory won by the ple- 
beians was in the passage of the Publilian 
Law in 471 B.C. This law was proposed 
by the tribune Valerius Publilius, and was 
brought about by the murder of the tribune 
Gnasus Genucius. The main object of this 
law was the protection of the plebeian assem- 
bly and the plebeian officers, but its exact 
details are unknown. It is believed by some 



54 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

that the comitia tributa really came into 
existence with this law, and that previously 
the plebeians had voted by curies. The 
law limited to plebeian freeholders the right 
to vote in a plebeian assembly, and excluded 
nearly all the freedmen and clients who were 
under the influence of the patricians as well as 
the patricians themselves. It is possible also 
that the increase in the number of the trib- 
unes from two to five was made by this law. 
In 462 B.C. an unsuccessful attempt was made 
to abolish the office of tribune; in 457 B.C. 
came the increase from five tribunes to ten. 
From 451 to 450 B.C. the regular system 
of government at Rome was interrupted by 
the election and rule of the decemvirs. The 
episode of these decemvirs has an important 
place in Roman history; but (as is the case 
with all events in Roman history in the fifth 
century before Christ) our knowledge of these 
men, of their work, and of their overthrow is 
very uncertain. The election of these officials 
was primarily brought about by the recog- 
nized necessity for a reform and codification 
of the Roman laws. If the duties of these 
men had been limited to the preparation of 
such code, its character and position would 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 55 

not have been unsimilar to that of num- 
erous other bodies of men appointed for a 
similar purpose in many countries and in all 
ages. But the peculiarity about the work of 
the decemvirs lies in the fact that upon their 
appointment all the ordinary Roman offices 
were discontinued and the entire judicial and 
executive administration of the state passed 
into the hands of the decemvirs. 

During their first year of office the decem- 
virs drew up ten tables of laws, so called 
because the laws were engraved upon tables 
of copper and stood up in the Forum on the 
rostra in front of the Senate house. 

According to the legends (for the Roman 
historical records of this century are little 
more than such), it had originally been 
intended to intrust the decemvirs with power 
only for a single year, but their work being 
incomplete at the expiration of the first year, 
they were chosen for a second year. It is 
uncertain whether the decemvirs for the 
second year were exactly the same men as 
those for the first year. According to some 
reports some of the decemvirs of the second 
year were plebeians, while none of those 
originally elected belonged to that order. 



56 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

During their second year of office the 
decemvirs prepared two more tables of laws, 
and these, with the ten tables prepared during 
the preceding year, constituted the famous 
" Law of the Twelve Tables," the first Roman 
code of which we have any knowledge. Only 
fragmentary extracts from these tables have 
come down to us, but these fragments fur- 
nish us with such an insight into early Roman 
laws, institutions, and customs that they are 
here inserted: 

THE TWELVE TABLES 
Table I 

THE SUMMONS BEFORE THE MAGISTRATE 

1. If the plaintiff siunmon a man to appear before 
the magistrate and he refuse to go, the plaintiff shaU 
first call witnesses and arrest him. 

2. If the defendant attempt evasion or flight, the 
plaintiff shall take him by force. 

3. If the defendant be prevented by illness or old 
age, let him who summons him before the magistrate 
furnish a beast of biirden, but he need not send a 
covered carriage for him unless he choose. 

4. For a wealthy defendant only a wealthy man may 
go bail ; any one who chooses may go bail for a poor 
citizen of the lowest class. 

5. In case the contestants come to an agreement j 
the magistrate shall announce the fact. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 57 

6. In case they come to no agreement, they shall 
before noon enter the case in the comitium or forum. 

7. To the party present in the afternoon the magis- 
trate shall award the suit. 

9. Sunset shall terminate the proceedings. 
10. . . . sureties and sub-sureties . , . 

Table II 

JUDICIAL PROCEDURE 

2. A serious illness or a legal appointment with an 
alien . . . should one of these occur to the judge, 
arbiter, or either party to the suit, the appointed 
trial must be postponed. 

3. If the witnesses of either party fail to appear, 
that party shall go and serve a verbal notice at his 
door on three days. 

Table III 

EXECUTION FOLLOWING CONFESSION OR JUDGMENT 

1. A debtor, either by confession or judgment, 
shall have thirty days' grace. 

2. At the expiration of this period the plaintiff 
shall serve a formal summons upon the defendant, 
and bring him before the magistrate. 

3. If the debt be not paid, or if no one become 
surety, the plaintiff shall lead him away, and bind 
him with shackles and fetters of not less than fifteen 
pounds' weight, and heavier at his discretion. 

4. If the debtor wish, he may live at his own expense ; 
if not, he in whose custody he may be shall furnish 
him a pound of meal a day, more at his discretion. 



S8 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

6. On the third market day the creditors, if there 
are several, shall divide the property. If one take 
more or less, no guilt shall attach to him. 

Table IV 

PATERNAL RIGHTS 

3. If a father shall thrice sell his son, the son shall 
be free from the paternal authority. 

Table V 

INHERITANCE AND TUTELAGE 

3. What has been appointed in regard to the prop- 
erty or tutelage shall be binding in law. 

4. If a man die intestate, having no natural heirs, 
his property shall pass to the nearest agnate. 

5. If there be no agnate, the gentiles shall succeed. 

7. . . . if one be hopelessly insane, his agnates and 
gentiles shall have authority over him and his prop- 
erty ... in case there be none to take charge . . . 

8. . . . from that estate . . . into that estate. 

Table VI 

OWNERSHIP AND POSSESSION 

I. Whenever a party shall negotiate a nexum or 
transfer by mancipatio, according to the formal state- 
ment so let the law be. 

5. Whoever in presence of the magistrates shall join 
issue by manuum consertio . . . 

7. A beam built into a house or vine trellis shall 
not be removed. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 59 

9. When the vines have been pruned, until the 
grapes are removed ... 

Table VII 

LAW CONCERNING REAL PROPERTY 

5. If parties get into dispute about boundaries . . . 

7. They shall pave the way. If they do not pave 
the way with stones a man may drive where he pleases. 

8. If water from rain gutters cause damage . . . 

Table VIII 

ON TORTS 

1. Whoever shall chant a magic spell . . . 

2. If a man maim another, and does not compromise 
with him, there shall be retaliation in kind. 

3. If with the fist or club a man break a bone of a 
freeman, the penalty shall be three hundred asses; if 
of a slave, one hundred and fifty asses. 

4. If he does any injury to another, twenty-five 
asses; if he sing a satirical song let him be beaten. 

5. . . . if he shall have inflicted a loss ... he 
shall make it good. 

6. Whoever shall blight the crops of another by 
incantation . . . nor shalt thou win over to thyself 
another's grain ... 

12. If a thief be caught stealing by night and he 
be slain, the homicide shall be lawful. 

13. If in the daytime the thief defend himself with 
a weapon, one may kill him. 

15. . . . with a leather girdle about his naked 
body, and a platter in his hand . . . 



6o THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

1 6. If a man contend at law about a theft not 
detected in the act . . . 

21. If a patron cheat his client, he shall become 
infamous. 

22. He who has been summoned as a witness or 
acts as libripens, and shall refuse to give his testimony, 
shall be accounted infamous, and shall be incapable 
of acting subsequently as witness. 

24. If a weapon slip from a man's hand without 
his intention of hurling it . . . 

Table IX 

(No fragments of this table are extant.) 

Table X 

SACRED LAW 

1. They shall not inter or bum a dead man within 
the city. 

2. . . . more than this a man shall not do . . . ; 
a man shall not smooth the wood for the funeral pyre 
with an ax. 

4. Women shall not lacerate their faces, nor indulge 
in immoderate wailing for the dead. 

5. They shall not collect the bones of a dead man 
for a second interment. 

7. Whoever wins a crown, either in person or by 
his slaves or animals, or has received it for valor . . . 

8. . . .he shall not add gold . . . ; but gold 
used in joining the teeth . . . This may be burned 
or buried with the dead without incurring any penalty. 

Table XI 
(No fragments of this table are extant.) 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 6i 
Table XII 

SUPPLEMENTARY LAWS 

2. If a slave has committed theft, or has done 
damage . . . 

3. If either party shall have won a suit concerning 
property by foul means, at the discretion of the oppo- 
nent , . . the magistrate shall fix the damage at 
twice the profits arising from the interim possession. 

The decemvirs were forcibly overthrown 
before the close of their second year in office. 
The stories as to the cause are not only con- 
flicting but diametrically so. According to 
one historical theory, the rebellion against 
the decemvirs began among the plebeians 
on account of the oppression which they 
suffered from the hands of these men; while, 
on the other hand, it is believed by many 
historians that the decemvirs were overthrown 
by the patricians because they were giving 
too many concessions to the plebeians. What- 
ever the cause, the power of the decemvirs 
was taken from them and all the former 
Roman officials and assemblies were reestab- 
lished, with the old powers and jurisdictions. 
The "Law of the Twelve Tables," which the 
decemvirs had drawn up, however, remained 
for centuries as the great basis of Roman law. 



62 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Five years after the deposition of the 
decemvirs the tribune Canuleius secured the 
passage by the comitia tributa of the Canu- 
leian Law, which marked another milestone 
passed by the plebeians in their march 
toward equality before the law. 

Two great concessions were given by this 
act, one in the field of private and the other 
in the field of public law. The law which 
had existed from the earliest days in Rome, 
and which had been incorporated in the "Law 
of the Twelve Tables," prohibiting inter- 
marriage between plebeians and patricians, 
was abolished. It was also provided that 
any year the people, instead of electing con- 
suls, might elect military tribunes, who 
should possess all the powers, although not 
all the dignities, of the consuls. Either 
patricians or plebeians could be elected to 
the office of military tribunes. 

The election of military tribunes was 
authorized by law many years before any 
such officials were elected in Rome; but the 
fear that the consular power might sometime 
fall into the hands of a plebeian induced the 
patricians in 443 B.C. to secure the passage 
of a law for the creation of new officials 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 63 

who should possess some of the powers pre- 
viously held by the consul and who must be 
chosen from the patrician order. 

These new officials, called censors, were to 
be two in number and were to be elected 
every five years. At first these officials held 
office until the time arrived for the election 
of their successors, but later their term of 
office was limited to one year and a half, 
there thus being three and one half years 
out of every five-year period when this office 
was in abeyance. 

The most important duty given to the 
censors at the outset seems to have been the 
authority of filling vacancies in the Senate 
as it became necessary to keep the number 
up to the required three hundred. Up to 
this time this power of appointing senators 
had been exercised by the consul. As time 
went on, however, the powers of this office 
rapidly increased until at length it became 
the highest post of honor at Rome, the 
men elected censors being almost invariably 
former consuls or military tribunes. 

The arbitrary power of inquisition over 
all the public affairs of Rome and the pri- 
vate conduct of the Roman citizens was so 



64 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

astonishingly great that we wonder how it 
could have existed without constant and gross 
abuses. In the later days of the republic 
the censors had the right to make a so-called 
"censorial note" of all Roman citizens, who, 
without having gone to the point of violating 
the criminal law, or at least without having 
been convicted of a crime, had been guilty 
of dishonorable or immoral conduct. All 
persons thus named suffered severe civic 
penalties. If the person were a senator he 
lost his seat in the Senate; if a knight, he 
lost the peculiar privileges belonging to this 
rank. In every case the person lost his 
membership in the association of his tribe 
and was subject to increased taxation. 

The exclusive right to serve as censors was 
one of the last exclusive privileges retained 
by the patricians, the plebeians not being 
made eligible to this office until 339 B.C. 

Although Rome was in an almost constant 
state of warfare during the fifth century 
before Christ, the conflicts were neither on 
a large scale nor decisive in their results. 
The chief enemies of Rome were the neigh- 
boring Latin and Etruscan cities, with one 
or another of whom Rome was almost 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 65 

constantly engaged in hostilities. At the be- 
ginning of the fourth century before Christ 
Rome was attacked by a new and more terri- 
ble enemy from the north, who very nearly 
changed the whole course of the world's 
history by wiping the city of Rome out of 
existence before its career of greatness had 
begun. 

This enemy was the Gauls, who captured 
and burned Rome in the year 390 B.C., 
but who failed to take the citadel of the city 
and finally withdrew, either being driven 
away or bribed to depart. Not only are the 
details of the capture of Rome by the Gauls 
very uncertain, but by destroying all the old 
Roman records and many of the Roman 
monuments in their sack of Rome, the Gauls 
are responsible for much of the uncertainty 
which exists as to the truth of the details of 
the history of Rome prior to their invasion. 
In fact, it is generally considered that the 
authentic history of Rome begins only after 
390 B.C., the history of the Roman kingdom 
being little more than mythology; while what 
we know of the Roman republic prior to 
390 B.C. consists of an inseparable mixture 
of true history and legendary tales. 



66 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

After the departure of the Gauls the ques- 
tion arose whether Rome should be rebuilt 
on its old site or whether all the Romans 
should migrate in a body to Veii. It was 
only after a long discussion that it was finally 
decided to remain at Rome. 

The rebuilding of Rome was immediately 
followed by another period of conflict between 
the patricians and plebeians. Two causes of 
discontent brought about the renewal of 
this contest. The first was the financial 
condition of the poorer classes, who had been 
rendered more desperate through the losses 
occasioned by the Gallic invasion ; and second, 
the desire of the richer plebeians to share 
in the political honors reserved exclusively 
for the patricians. 

In this contest the leaders of the plebeians 
were the tribunes Gaius Licinius and Lucius 
Sextius, who were, year after year, reelected 
to this office by the people. 

The so-called Licinian Laws, first intro- 
duced by these tribunes in 376 B.C., were 
adopted only after the most bitter political 
contest which up to this time had ever been 
fought in Rome. Time and again, the tribunes 
resorted to their veto power to put a stop to 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 67 

the carrying on of every function of the Roman 
government. These laws were finally passed 
in 367 B.C., their three great provisions being 
as follows: 

1. That of all debts on which interest had 
been paid, the siim of the interest paid should 
be deducted from the principal, and the 
remainder paid off in three successive years. 

2. That no citizen should hold more than 
five hundred jugera (nearly 320 acres) of the 
public land, or should feed on the public 
pastures more than one hundred head of 
larger cattle and five hundred of smaller, 
under penalty of a heavy fine. 

3. That henceforth consuls, not consular 
tribunes, should always be elected, and that 
one of the two consuls must be a plebeian. 

Although the Licinian Laws are generally 
held to have equalized the different orders 
at Rome, to have terminated forever the 
bitter jealousy between patricians and ple- 
beians, to have put a stop for a time to class 
controversies of all kinds, and to have 
rendered possible the great career of foreign 
conquest upon which Rome soon entered, the 
fact remains that the benefit of these laws 
was experienced far more by the small class 



68 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

of wealthy plebeians than by the great mass 
of this order. 

Henceforth, with very few exceptions, one 
consul was always a plebeian, Lucius Sextius 
being the first plebeian consul and Gaius 
Licinius the third; but the chance of being 
elected consul was in reality limited to a 
small class of plebeians and conferred little 
practical benefit upon the ordinary member 
of the order. 

The laws for the relief of the poorer classes 
were not so fully enforced. In particular, 
the wealthy citizens holding large allotments 
of the public land found methods by which 
to evade the carrying out of the provisions 
of this new law, and we are surprised to find 
Licinius himself as one of the offenders in 
this respect. 

It was in the period following the passage 
of the Licinian Laws that the greatest inequal- 
ities in wealth began to appear at Rome, and 
the numbers of free small landowners to 
decrease. 

The history of the Licinian Laws and of the 
following period show conclusively how mere 
political equality is never sufficient to secure 
the welfare of the mass of the community, 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 69 

and that the power held by a class possessed 
of great wealth, but without special political 
privileges, is greater than that of a recognized 
nobility, and far more apt to be abused, 
on account of the absence of any feeling of 
class honor. 

Two slight efforts were made by the patri-^ 
cians to counteract the political provisions 
of the Licinian Laws. For the first eleven 
years after the passage of the Licinian Laws 
one consul was a plebeian and one a patrician. ' 
In the thirteen years beginning with 355 B.C.,' 
two patricians were elected consuls in eight 
of the years; after this, violations of the 
law ceased, and one consul belonged to each 
order down to the year 172 B.C., when both 
consulships were open to the plebeians. The 
wealthy class of both orders had been so 
mingled by this time that thereafter consuls 
were elected indiscriminately from either order, 
although this election was almost invariably 
restricted to the members of the great families. 

Immediately after the passage of the Licin- 
ian Laws the patricians secured the creation 
of a new office. The man holding this ofhce 
was called prcEtor, and was given the judicial 
powers formerly belonging to the consuls. At 



70 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

** '" 

a later period the number of praetors was in- 
creased to two, one of whom, known as the 
prcBtor urbanus, had jurisdiction over contro- 
versies between Roman citizens, and the other, 
the prcBtor peregrinus, who had jurisdiction 
over controversies between foreigners residing 
at Rome and between Romans and foreigners. 



CHAPTER V 
The Period of Foreign Conquest 

'T^HE most glorious period of Roman history, 
from the military standpoint, followed 
closely upon the cessation of fierce national 
contests in the fourth century before Christ. 
The united efforts of patricians and plebeians, 
devoted to the task of foreign conquest, proved 
sufficient in a few generations to win for 
Rome her world empire. 

"The fifth century is the most beautiful century 
of Rome. The plebeians had conquered the consul- 
ship and are succeeding in conquering their admission 
to other magistracies which the patricians wished to 
reserve; they free themselves from the servitude 
which, under the name of Nexus, weighed on the debt- 
ors. They arrive at political equality and individual 
independence; at the same time the old aristocracy 
still dominates in the Senate and maintains there the 
inflexibility of its resolves and the persistence of its 
designs. It was thanks to this interior condition that 
the Roman people was able to survive the strongest 
tests from without over which it had triumphed, and 
to make that progress which cost it most dear. We 
see the peoples fight, one by one, and often all together; 
the Latin people, the Etruscans, the Goths, the 
Samnites, the other Sabellic peoples of the Apennines; 

71 



72 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

and the end is always victory. The beginnings of this 
history were somber. Rome was afflicted by one of 
those pestilences which one finds in all the epochs of 
the history of this unsanitary city. Thence was the 
origin of those scenic pieces imported by the Etruscans 
and giving origin to comedy — a means devised to 
appease the gods ; so that Roman comedy had an origin 
religious and dismal. The fifth century is for Rome 
the age of great devotions and of grand sacrifices." 
(J. J. Ampere in U empire romaine a Rome.) 

A full description of the various military 
campaigns of Rome would tend to obscure 
rather than to illumine the political and 
economic history of the city. An enumera- 
tion of the foreign conquests of Rome during 
this period, however, is necessary to indicate 
the rapid increase in the territorial possessions 
of Rome, with their inevitable reaction upon 
the domestic conditions of the republic. 

The first wars of Rome after the passage 
of the Licinian Laws were renewed contests 
with her neighboring enemies. In 361 B.C. 
Rome was again threatened by a new invasion 
of the Gauls. The following year the Roman 
records mention a victory over the Hernicans 
by one Roman consul, and over the Gauls, 
and the Latins of Tibur, by the other. This 
alliance of the Gauls with a portion of the 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES n 

Latins so alarmed the majority of the Latin 
cities that a new league between the Romans 
and Latins was formed in 358 B.C. The 
Gauls soon after retired from the neighbor- 
hood of Latium, and their allies, Tibur and 
Privernum, were compelled to enter the new 
Latin League. 

A war waged against Rome by the Etruscan 
city of Tarquinii and its allies so seriously 
threatened Rome that the Roman politi- 
cal factions forgot their differences so far 
as to agree to the appointment (for the first 
time in the history of the city) of a plebeian, 
in the person of C. Marcius Rutilus, to the 
ofhce of dictator. The old jealousy of the 
patricians, however, was soon manifested 
again in the opposition of the Senate to the 
granting of a trivimph to this plebeian for 
the great miHtary victory which he soon won. 
In 350 B.C. a third invasion of the Gauls 
was repulsed by the Romans. 

The next great contest in which Rome was 
engaged was that with the Samnites. This 
race was both the most worthy and the most 
bitter of the enemies of Rome within Italy, 
and the long warfare between Rome and the 
Samnites was terminated only by the practical 



74 THE- TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

extermination of the latter race. The First 
Samnite War extended from 343 to 341 B.C. 
and was indecisive in its results, the Samnites 
at its close agreeing to give a year's pay and 
three months' provisions to the Roman army, 
and being permitted to make war on the 
Sidicini. 

The close of the First Samnite War was 
followed closely by the Latin War (340-338 
B.C.). This war was brought about by the 
jealousy felt by the other Latin towns toward 
Rome. Rome had been abusing her position 
as the capital of the Latin League, and desired 
to acquire an acknowledged supremacy over 
Latium. The. war was an effort on the part 
of the other Latin cities to restrain the too 
rapidly increasing power of Rome and to 
reestablish the balance of power in Latiimi. 
In this war was seen the extraordinary 
spectacle of the Samnites appearing as allies 
of Rome. The Hernicans also aided the 
Romans, and the Sidicini and Campanians 
aided the Latins. The war resulted in the 
complete overthrow of the Latins; but the 
Romans showed great generosity and good 
judgment in their treatment of the con- 
quered cities after the war, and thus did 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 75 

much toward binding the Latins to Rome 
for the future. 

The main provisions of the peace agree- 
ments were as follows: Roman citizenships, 
in different degrees, were conferred upon the 
inhabitants of the various Latin towns, who 
were, however, forbidden to form any leagues 
among themselves or to hold diets; inter- 
marriage and commerce between the different 
Latin towns were prohibited; the municipium 
such as the Latins had previously possessed 
was given to the citizens of Capua, Cumae, 
Formias, Fundi, and Suessula; the Latin con- 
tingents in the Roman army were henceforth 
to be permitted to serve apart from the 
legions under their own officers; and the 
Latin pubHc land, two thirds of that of 
Privernimi, and the lands in the Falernian 
district of Campania were taken by Rome, 
as were also the lands of the principal families 
of Velitras, who were compelled to emigrate 
beyond the Tiber. 

Ten years of peace followed, and then came 
the second and greatest of the Samnite wars 
(327-304 B.C.). The Samnites were aided 
during part of the war by the Etruscans and 
the Hernicans, but at the end the Samnites 



76 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

were compelled to acknowledge the suprem- 
acy of Rome and give up their independence. 
The Hernicans were completely overthrown 
in 307 B.C., and were united to Rome on con- 
ditions very similar to those possessed by 
the Latins. 

In the Third Samnite War (298-290 B.C.) 
the Romans were again victorious, although 
a league of Samnites, Etruscans, Gauls, and 
Umbrians was formed against them. The 
exact terms of the treaty of peace at the con- 
clusion of this war are not recorded, but 
undoubtedly riveted Roman control still more 
strongly upon Samnium. 

It was the final result of the Roman- 
Samnite wars which finally determined the 
question of the overlordship of Italy. Of 
all the numerous races of Italy, two and only 
two possessed the stamina which rendered 
them possible unifiers of the whole peninsula. 
Rome's defeat of Samnium left her without 
a rival in Italy and ready for contests with 
her later and greater rivals. The close of 
the Third Samnite War, however, did not 
end the resistance of the Samnites to Roman 
rule. Even down to the time of the contests 
of Marius and Sulla we find this race grasping 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 77 

every opportunity to strike a blow against 
Roman dominion. 

In 284 B.C. the Tarentines succeeded in 
bringing about a union of the Samnites, 
Lucanians, Umbrians, Bruttians, Etruscans, 
and Gauls against Rome. This war was a 
series of victories for the Romans. By the 
year 282 B.C. all of the Roman enemies were 
subdued except the Etruscans, with whom 
the war continued until 280 B.C. In this 
last-named year the Romans, alarmed by the 
danger of war with Pyrrhus, concluded a peace 
with the Etruscans on such terms as changed 
these people from bitterest enemies into 
most faithful allies. 

The time had now arrived when Rome 
was called upon for the first time to cross 
arms with enemies from beyond the Italian 
peninsula. The first of these contests with 
a foreign power was fought out entirely 
within the confines of Italy. 

The year 280 B.C. saw the beginning of the 
contest between Rome and Pyrrhus, king of 
Epirus, who had been summoned to Italy as 
an ally of the Greek city of Tarentum. At 
the outset the Romans suffered two great 
defeats, at Heraclea and on the plain of 



78 THE. TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Apulian Asculum, largely through their in- 
ability to meet the attacks of the phalanxes 
and of the war elephants. In the end, however, 
Pyrrhus, although aided by all the enemies 
of Rome in southern and central Italy, 
ended his campaign in failure and returned 
to Epirus in 275 B.C., his dream of a great 
western empire forever shattered. 

In the ten years following the departure 
of Pyrrhus the subjugation of all Italy was 
completed, followed by a reorganization of 
the government of the Roman colonies and 
subject cities. 

The second foreign enemy of Rome was 
Carthage, and the most dramatic pages in 
the whole history of Roman conquest are 
those which relate the story of the contest 
between these two titanic rivals for world 
supremacy. The immediate cause of the 
First Punic War arose over the possession of 
Messana, a city in Sicily separated from 
Italy by only a narrow strait; but war 
between Rome and Carthage was inevitable; 
and if Messana had not become the bone of 
contention, another would have been found. 
The First Punic War lasted from 264 to 
241 B.C. and resulted in victory for Rome. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 79 

By the terms of peace Carthage gave up Sicily 
and all the small islands between Sicily and 
Italy, and paid a heavy war indemnity to 
Rome. Shortly after the close of the war 
the Romans, by threats, compelled the Car- 
thaginians to surrender also the islands of 
Sardinia and Corsica. 

In 230 B.C. the Romans were engaged in 
war with the Illyrian pirates; and from 226 
to 221 B.C. with the Insubrian Gauls, both of 
which conflicts resulted in easy victories for 
the Roman arms. 

In the meantime Hamilcar, his son Hanni- 
bal, and his son-in-law Hasdrubal had been 
busy in Spain, reducing it under Carthaginian 
rule and preparing it to be used as a base of 
operation from which an invasion of Italy 
might be attempted whenever a favorable 
opportunity should present itself. 

In 227 B.C. the Romans, becoming alarmed 
at the spread of the Carthaginian empire in 
Spain, insisted on a treaty by which the river 
Ebro was fixed as the northern boundary 
beyond which the control of Carthage should 
never extend. In 219 B.C. Hannibal (whose 
father and brother-in-law had by this time 
both fallen in the war) attacked the city of 



8o THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Saguntum, which, though south of the Ebro, 
was an ally of Rome. No heed being taken 
of the Roman remonstrances, war was again 
declared. 

The Second Punic War lasted from 218 
to 202 B.C. The early years of this war 
saw a long series of Carthaginian victories, 
and their great general, Hannibal, has ever 
since ranked as one of the greatest military 
geniuses in history. This war, however, has 
been well described as that of a man against 
a nation ; and in the end the nation conquered. 
The final battle was that of Zama, fought in 
Africa in 202 B.C. 

By the terms of the treaty of peace made at 
the close of this war Carthage siurrendered to 
Rome all her territorial possessions outside 
of Africa, all her elephants, and all her war 
ships except three triremes, and also bound 
herself to pay a heavy annual tribute for 
fifty years. In addition, Carthage was pro- 
hibited from making war, under any circum- 
stances, outside of Africa, nor within Africa 
except with the consent of Rome; and was 
compelled to return to the ally of the Romans, 
Masinissa, king of Numidia, all the territory 
and property which had been taken from him 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 8i 

or his predecessors by Carthage. In many 
respects, however, the treaty was favorable 
to Carthage, who was permitted to keep her 
African territory practically intact, who was 
also permitted to keep her independence, 
and was not required to receive any Roman 
garrison. 

The Second Punic War was the decisive 
contest between Rome and Carthage, the 
First Punic War being indecisive and the third 
being merely the destruction of an already 
conquered people. This Second Punic War, 
however, was something more than the deci- 
sive contest between Rome and Carthage; it 
was the decisive contest between two con- 
tinents, two races, two systems of institutions. 
The battle of Metaurus has justly been 
classed as one of the decisive battles of the 
world. The capture of Rome by Hannibal 
could not have failed to have entirely altered 
the whole future course of history. If Han- 
nibal had been able to carry back to Car- 
thage the spoils of a conquered Rome he 
would also have carried with them to Africa 
the scepter of world empire. He would 
have wrested race supremacy and the leading 
place in civilization from the Aryan for the 



82 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Hamitic races. For many centuries, at least, 
the center of power and civilization would 
have been upon the southern instead of the 
northern shores of the Mediterranean, and 
it is at least doubtful whether, even to-day, 
the northern races could have completely 
eradicated the effects of such an event. 

In spite of the earlier triumphs of Persia 
and Greece, it was not until the Roman 
victory over the Carthaginians that the posi- 
tion of the Aryan races became definitely 
assured, 

Mommsen writes on the results of the 
Second Punic War as follows: 

"It remains for us to sum up the results of this 
terrible war, which for seventeen years had devas- 
tated the lands and islands from the Hellespont to 
the Pillars of Hercules. Rome was henceforth com- 
pelled by the force of circumstances to assume a 
position at which she had not directly aimed, and to 
exercise sovereignty over all the lands of the Medi- 
terranean. Outside Italy there arose the two new 
provinces in Spain, where the natives lived in a state 
of perpetual insurrection; the kingdom of Syracuse 
was now included in the Roman province of Sicily; 
a Roman instead of a Carthaginian protectorate was 
now established over the most important Numidian 
chiefs; Carthage was changed from a powerful com- 
mercial state into a defenseless mercantile town. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 83 

Thus all the western Mediterranean passed under 
the supremacy of Rome. In Italy itself, the destruc- 
tion of the Celts became a mere question of time: 
the ruling Latin people had been exalted by the struggle 
to a position of still greater eminence over the heads 
of the non-Latin or Latinized Italians such as the 
Etruscans and Sabellians in lower Italy. A terrible 
punishment was inflicted on the allies of Hannibal, 
Capua was reduced from the position of second city 
to that of first village in Italy; the whole soil, with a 
few exceptions, was declared to be public domain-land, 
and was leased out to small occupiers. The same fate 
befell the Picentes on the Silarus. The Bruttians 
became in a manner bondsmen to the Romans and 
were forbidden to carry arms. AH the Greek cities 
which had supported Hannibal were treated with 
great severity; and in the case of a number of Apulian, 
Lucanian, and Samnite commtmities a loss of terri- 
tory was inflicted, and new colonies were planted. 
Throughout Italy the non-Latin allies were made to 
feel their utter subjection to Rome, and the comedies 
of the period testify to the scorn of the victorious 
Romans. 

" It seems probable that not less than three hundred 
thousand Italians perished in this war, the brunt of 
which loss fell chiefly on Rome. After the battle of 
Carmae it was iound necessary to fill up the hideous 
gap in the Senate by an extraordinary nomination of 
177 senators; the ordinary burgesses suffered hardly 
less severely. Further, the terrible strain on the 
resources of the state had shaken the national economy 
to its very fovindations. Four hundred flourishing 



84 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

townships had been utterly ruined. The blows 
inflicted on the simple morality of the citizens and 
fanners by a camp life worked no less mischief. Gangs 
of robbers and desperadoes plundered Italy in danger- 
ous numbers. Home agriculture saw its existence 
endangered by the proof, first given in war, that the 
Roman people could be supported by foreign grain 
from Sicily and Egypt, Still, at the close and happy 
issue of so terrible a struggle, Rome might justly point 
with pride to the past and with confidence to the future. 
In spite of many errors she had survived all danger, 
and the only question now was whether she would 
have the wisdom to make right use of her victory, 
to bind still more closely to herself the Latin people, 
to gradually Latinize all her Italian subjects, and to 
rule her foreign dependents as subjects, not as slaves — 
whether she would reform her constitution and infuse 
new vigor into the imsound and fast-decaying portion 
of her state." 

Up to the close of the third century before 
Christ the wars of Rome had been mainly 
forced upon her by the aggressions of others, 
or had grown out of disputes which had- 
arisen in the natural course of events; but 
after the battle of Zama, Rome entered delib- 
erately upon a career of foreign conquest. 

In 200 B.C. a Roman army invaded Mace- 
don, and Philip, the king of this country, 
was completely defeated at the battle of 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 85 

Cynoscephalae in 197 B.C., but the Romans 
consented to easy terms of peace at this 
time on account of the expectation of a war 
with Syria. The first war between Rome and 
Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, began 
in 191 B.C. and ended in 187 B.C. By the 
terms of peace Antiochus gave up all his 
claims in Europe, and in Asia west of the 
Taurus. 

The Second Macedonian War began in 
172 B.C. and was concluded by the great 
Roman victory at Pydna in 168 B.C. Mace- 
don was at first divided into four repubHcs, 
between which the rights of connubium and 
commercium were prohibited, but soon sank 
into the condition of a Roman province. 
Roman influence and interference were also 
rapidly increasing in Greece during this 
period, although no formal annexation of 
territory was made at this time. 

The Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.), 
forced by Rome upon an almost helpless 
antagonist, resulted in the complete over- 
throw of the greatest of Rome's rivals. Car- 
thage was completely destroyed, and Africa 
became a Roman province. 

The Ach^an War (147-146 B.C.) resulted in 



86 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

the practical subjection of all Greece to Rome; 
and between the years 143 and 133 B c. the 
conquest of Spain was completed. 

The interest in Roman history during the 
period from 367 to 133 B.C. is mainly centered 
in the military achievements of the republic, 
but certain events in the political history 
of Rome diu*ing this period must be noted 
before passing to a consideration of the 
violent political conflicts which arose over 
the proposed reforms of the Gracchi. 

By the Lex Horatia and the Lex Publilia 
(339 B.C.) it was provided that the plebiscita 
(that is, the decrees of the comitia tributa) 
should be binding as laws; that one of the 
censors must be a plebeian; and that the 
subsequent ratification by the Senate should 
not be necessary to render valid the laws 
passed by the comitia centuriata. 

In 326 B.C. the Lex Poetelia Papiria pro- 
hibited debtors from assigning themselves as 
security for debts. This did not interfere 
with the selling of a debtor into slavery by 
means of the legis actio per manus injectionem; 
it merely prohibited the debtor from using 
himself as a special pledge to secure the 
payment of the debt. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 87 

In 304 B.C. the plebeians secured the pub- 
lication of a manual containing full informa- 
tion as to the proper steps in the proceedings 
in the various legis actiones, and also as to 
the dies fasti. In the early days at Rome all 
legal knowledge had belonged to the patri- 
cians, who had always strenuously resisted 
any movement toward making such informa- 
tion open to all. An exclusive knowledge of 
the law is of great advantage to any special 
class in any community, and one eagerly 
sought under different disguises in many 
countries. The present attempt to monop- 
olize legal education in the United States, 
and to attack all movements which might 
tend to a general diffusion of legal knowledge 
among the mass of the community, is merely 
another manifestation of the same spirit 
which animated the Roman patricians in 
their long contests to keep all legal knowl- 
edge away from the plebeians. While the 
study of all professions which have no polit- 
ical signification, such as that of medicine, 
may safely be regulated by the government, 
and while the government may without 
injustice impose proper qualifications upon 
those who desire to practice law as their 



88 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

profession, any attempt of the government 
to restrict the teaching or study of the law, 
or to impose upon those desiring to take bar 
examinations restrictions intended merely to 
keep out of the profession those not fortunate 
enough to belong to the wealthy classes, can 
be intended only as an attack on democratic 
principles and as an attempt to create a 
monopoly of legal learning for improper 
purposes. 

In 286 B.C. was passed the Hortensian Law, 
which brought about the complete political 
equality of plebeians and patricians, what- 
ever slight distinctions still remained being 
removed by this law. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Tribes, the Colonies, and 
THE Provinces 

/^OMPLETE equality of political and 
civil rights has never existed, in any 
republic, among those subject to the laws; 
and throughout the whole history of the 
Roman repubhc the most striking discrimi- 
nations existed between different strata in 
the political and economic organizations. 

The contests arising from caste distinc- 
tions among the Romans themselves are dis- 
cussed in other chapters of this volimie; it is 
here proposed to treat of the distinctions ex- 
isting between Roman citizens, allies, and 
subjects and to describe briefly the status of 
each class. 

Just as in the days of the Roman kingdom 
the test of Roman citizenship was member- 
ship in one of the curise, so in the time of the 
republic the test became membership in one 
of the tribes. 

In the early days of the republic the number 
of tribes was twenty-one. Four new tribes 
were estabHshed in 387 B.C. in the conquered 

89 



90 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

territories of Veii, Capena, and Falerii. Other 
tribes were from time to time created, until 
by the time of the close of the war with 
Pyrrhus the total ntimber of tribes was thirty- 
three. The twelve new tribes occupied a 
district beyond the Tiber extending a little 
farther than Veii, a portion of the Sabine 
and Aequian territory beyond the Anio, 
part of Latium, part of the Volscian territory, 
and the coast lands as far as the Liris. The 
last addition to the nvimber of tribes at Rome 
took place in 235 B.C., when the ntimber was 
increased to thirty-five. 

The struggles in Rome for the extension 
of political rights and privileges were always 
of a concrete, never of an abstract character. 
We find none of the philosophy of Montes- 
quieu among the Romans; no discussion of 
natural rights, no effort for the securing of 
political equality in the abstract. The Roman 
contests for liberty were always of a strictly 
practical and, it might perhaps be added, of 
a strictly selfish character. We find a series 
of conflicts, in each of which a certain class 
of the citizens (or subjects) of Rome fought 
for the right to be enrolled among those 
possessed of Roman political rights. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 91 

At first the contests were all between the 
actual inhabitants of Rome itself. The polit- 
ical controversies, however, did not terminate 
upon the admission of the plebeians to full 
political rights. After the plebeians had won 
their contests there came the Latins, and 
after the Latins the Italians. 

The relation between early Rome and the 
other cities of Latium was of the closest char- 
acter. From the remotest times, long before 
the foundation of Rome, a league of Latin 
cities was in existence. At the head of 
this league stood Alba Longa (the long white 
city). Rome in an early period in her his- 
tory overthrew Alba Longa and succeeded to 
her place at the head of the confederacy. 
While, however, the primary of Alba Longa 
had never extended beyond giving to that 
city the honorary presidency of the league, 
making it the religious center of Latium, the 
leadership of Rome was of a real and sub- 
stantial character. By the terms of agree- 
ment between the members of the new Latin 
League, Rome was tacitly ranked as the equal 
of the other cities combined, it being agreed 
that all territory won by the league in war 
should be divided, one half to Rome and one 



92 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

half among the other cities. The rights of 
intermarriage and of trade existed between 
all the cities of the league. 

In 384 B.C. Rome was strong enough to 
compel the league to agree to the closing of 
its membership. At that time there were in 
the league thirty towns with full Latin rights 
and seventeen towns without the right of 
voting. Towns which in the future should 
become connected with the league were to 
have the rights of intermarriage and of trade 
only with Rome. 

The Latin League came to an end in 338 B.C. 
The extension of the rights of Roman citizen- 
ship, either complete or qualified, to other 
races in Italy is referred to in other chapters 
of this book. The history of this subject is 
thus simimarized by Mommsen: 

"It remains for us to consider the political effect 
of the mighty changes consequent upon the establish- 
ment of Roman supremacy in Italy. We do not know 
with exactness what privileges Rome reserved for 
herself as sovereign state. It is certain that she 
alone could make war, conclude treaties, and coin 
money; and that, further, any war or treaty resolved 
upon by the Roman people was legally binding on all 
Italian communities, and that the silver money of 
Rome was current ever3rwhere in Italy. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 93 

"The relations of the Italians to Rome cannot in 
all cases be precisely defined, but the main features are 
as follows. In the first place, the full Roman franchise 
was extended as far as was compatible with the pres- 
ervation of the urban character of the Roman com- 
munity. Those who received this franchise may be 
divided into three classes. First, all the occupants of 
the various allotments of state lands, now embracing 
a considerable portion of Etruria and Campania, were 
included. Second, all the communities which, after 
the method first adopted in the case of Tusculum, 
were incorporated and completely merged in the 
Roman state. . . . Finally, full Roman citizenship 
was possessed by the maritime or burgess colonies 
which had been instituted for the protection of the 
coast. ... 

"Thus the title of Roman citizen in its fullest 
sense was possessed by men dwelling as far north as 
Lake Sabatinus, as far east as the Apennines, and as 
far south as Formiae. But within those limits isolated 
conmaunities such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia, and 
Norba, were without the Roman franchise; while 
beyond them other communities, such as Sena, pos- 
sessed it. 

"In the next place, we must distinguish the various 
grades of subjection which marked all the communities 
not honored with the full Roman franchise. As in 
the case of the recipients of full citizenship, so here 
we may make a threefold division. To the first 
division belong the Latin towns: these retained 
their Latin rights; that is, they were self-governing 



94 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

and stood on an equal footing with Roman citizens 
as regards the right of trading and inheritance. But 
it is important to observe that the Latins of the later 
times of the republic were no longer for the most 
part members of the old Latin towns, which had 
participated in the Alban festival, but were colonists 
planted in Latium by Rome, who honored Rome 
as their capital and parent city, and formed the main 
supports of Roman rule in Latium. Indeed, the old 
Latin communities, with the exception of Tibur 
and Prasneste, had sunk into insignificance. It was 
but natural that the Latin colonies, issuing as they 
did from the burgess-body of Rome, should not rest 
content with mere Latin rights, but should aim at 
the full rights of Roman citizens. Rome, on the 
other hand, now that Italy was subjugated, no longer 
felt her former need of these colonies; nor did she 
deem it prudent to extend the full franchise with the 
same freedom as she hitherto had done. . . . 

"To the second division belong those towns whose 
inhabitants were passive citizens of Rome {cives sine 
suffragio). They were liable to service in the Roman 
legions and to taxation, and were included in the Ro- 
man census. A deputy or prefect appointed annually 
by the Roman praetor administered justice according 
to laws which were subjected to Roman revision. 

"In the third and last division we may include all 
allied communities which were not Latin states; the 
relation of these towns to Rome was defined by sepa- 
rate treaties, and therefore varied in accordance with 
the terms imposed by such agreements. . . . 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 95 

"It had taken Rome 120 years to complete the 
union of the Italian peninsula, broken up as it was by 
mountain ranges and naturally favoring the forma- 
tion and preservation of various isolated states. But 
union it was, rather than a subjugation, and each 
nation was left to the practical management of its own 
affairs. Content with self-government, the various 
communities, for the most part, easily bore the yoke 
of Roman supremacy. Eventually all the municipal 
towns received the full Roman franchise (90 B.C.), 
and thus established the municipal principle of govern- 
ment which endures to the present day." 

The rights of Roman citizenship were never 
generally given outside of the Italian peninsula, 
although such rights were granted to a few 
favored individuals in all portions of the 
Roman world. The possession of these rights 
was the greatest privilege which could be ac- 
quired by any subject of Rome. Even when 
the strictly political rights of such citizen dis- 
appeared under the empire, the personal dis- 
tinction atid protection connected with this 
citizenship remained. As striking an evi- 
dence of the dignity and privileges of a Roman 
citizen as could be desired is fotmd in the Bible 
in the twenty-second chapter of Acts: 

"The chief captain commanded him to be brought 
into the castle, and bade that he should be examined 



96 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

by scourging; that he might know wherefore they 
cried so against him. 

"And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said 
unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you 
to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned ? 

"When the centurion heard that, he went and told 
the chief captain, saying. Take heed what thou doest: 
for this man is a Roman. 

"Then the chief captain came, and said imto him, 
Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. 

"And the chief captain answered, With a great 
sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I 
was free bom. 

"Then straightway they departed from him which 
should have examined him: and the chief captain 
also was afraid, after he knew that he was a Roman, 
and because he had bound him." 

At the close of the Second Punic War 
Rome was in possession of five provinces — 
Sicily, Sardinia, Hither Spain, Farther Spain, 
and the Gallic coast of Umbria. This latter 
province soon became an integral part of 
Italy, but the number of Roman provinces 
was kept at five by the creation of the prov- 
ince of Cisalpine Gaul. From this time on 
the nimiber of Roman provinces rapidly 
increased. The existence of the provinces 
perpetuated the existence of various classes 
of political rights. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 97 

We will close this account with a descrip- 
tion by Gibbon of the relations between Rome 
and the provinces as they existed during the 
closing years of the republic and the early 
days of the empire: 

"Till the privileges of Romans had been progres- 
sively extended to all the inhabitants of the empire, 
an important distinction was preserved between 
Italy and the provinces. The former was esteemed 
the centre of public unity, and the firm basis of the 
constitution. Italy claimed the birth, or at least the 
residence, of the emperors and the senate. The 
estates of the Italians were exempt from taxes, their 
persons from the arbitrary jurisdiction of governors. 
Their municipal corporations, formed after the perfect 
model of the capital, were intrusted, under the imme- 
diate eye of the supreme power, with the execution 
of the laws. From the foot of the Alps to the extrem- 
ity of Calabria, all the natives of Italy were bom 
citizens of Rome. Their partial distinctions were oblit- 
erated, and they insensibly coalesced into one great 
nation, united by language, manners, and civil insti- 
tutions, and equal to the weight of a powerful empire. 
The republic gloried in her generous policy, and was 
frequently rewarded by the merit and services of her 
adopted sons. Had she always confined the distinc- 
tion of Romans to the ancient families within the 
walls of the city, that immortal name would have 
been deprived of some of its noblest ornaments. 
Virgil was a native of Mantua; Horace was inclined 



98 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

to doubt whether he should call himself an Apulian 
or a Lucanian; it was in Padua that an historian was 
found worthy to record the majestic series of Roman 
victories. The patriot family of the Catos emerged 
from Tusculum; and the little town of Arpinum 
claimed the double honor of producing Marius and 
Cicero, the former of whom deserved, after Romulus 
and Camillus, to be styled the Third Founder of Rome; 
and the latter, after saving his country from the de- 
signs of Catiline, enabled her to contend with Athens 
for the palm of eloquence. 

"The provinces of the empire (as they have been 
described in the preceding chapter) were destitute of 
any public force, or constitutional freedom. In Etru- 
ria, in Greece, and in Gaul, it was the first care of 
the senate to dissolve those dangerous confederacies, 
which taught mankind that, as the Roman arms pre- 
vailed by division, they might be resisted by union. 
Those princes whom the ostentation of gratitude or 
generosity permitted for a while to hold a precarious 
sceptre were dismissed from their thrones as soon as 
they had performed their appointed task of fashioning 
to the yoke the vanquished nations. The free states 
and cities which had embraced the cause of Rome 
were rewarded with a nominal alliance, and insensibly 
sunk into real servitude. The public authority was 
everywhere exercised by the ministers of the senate 
and of the emperors, and that authority was absolute 
and without control. But the same salutary maxims 
of government, which had secured the peace and 
obedience of Italy, were extended to the most distant 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 



99 



conquests. A nation of Romans was gradually 
foraied in the provinces, by the double expedient of 
introducing colonies, and of admitting the most faith- 
ful and deserving of the provincials to the freedom 
of Rome." 



CHAPTER VII 

The Crisis — The Attempted Reforms of 
THE Gracchi 

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment 

to decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or 

evil side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each 

the bloom or blight, 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep 

upon the right. 
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness 

and that light. 

"Backward look across the ages and the beacon- 
moments see 

That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through 
Oblivion's sea; 

Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding 
cry 

Of those Crises, God's stem winnowers, from whose 
feet earth's chaff must fly; 

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment 
hath passed by. 

"Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages 
but record 

100 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES loi 

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems 

and the Word; 
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the 

throne, — 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the 

dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch 

above his own." 

— Lowell's The Present Crisis. 

npHE critical days of any contest are seldom 
those of its final culmination. The end 
has generally been long foreshadowed. The 
time at which the last stand for the Roman 
liberties was made was not during the civil wars 
of the last century before Christ, but at the 
time of the attempted reforms of the previous 
century. The years in which the great crisis 
of the Roman republic was reached were those 
from 134 to 121 B.C., the years marked by 
the activities of the Gracchi. 

The story of the Gracchi constitutes one 
of the strangest, grandest, and saddest stories 
in the whole course of history. It is a double 
story of sacrifice, suffering, and untiring 
labor; of temporary success, of ultimate death 
and failure — but a failure which stands forth 
more glorious in the pages of history than the 
greatest successes of others. It is the story 



I02 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

of two brothers, possessed of wealth and of 
high rank and connections, in the richest 
and most powerful country of the world — 
men to whom was open either an easy path 
along the old established road to the highest 
honors of the Roman state or the life of luxu- 
rious ease so eagerly embraced by the majority 
of the rich young Romans of that day. Cast- 
ing aside both these choices, and recognizing 
the dangers of their native state, these broth- 
ers sacrificed all in an attempt to restore to 
Rome those conditions which in the past 
had built up her greatness, and to secure a 
redress of those conditions which had made 
the status of the great mass of the citizens 
of the "Mistress of the World" hardly 
superior to that of the very serfs. It is a 
story of the most aggravated selfishness and 
relentless hatred on the part of those favored 
few whose special and illegal interests were 
threatened by the attacks of the young 
reformers. It is also, unfortunately, to too 
great an extent a story of ingratitude and 
cowardice on the part of those for whose 
interest Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus sacri- 
ficed themselves in vain. 

The Gracchi were fortimate in having as 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 103 

father one of those Romans who still retained 
the Roman virtues of an earlier age, — patri- 
otism, bravery, and honor. Not only had 
the administration of the elder Gracchus of 
the offices of consul and censor at Rome been 
free from corruption, but his administration 
of the governorship of the Province of Ebro 
had been of great service to his native coun- 
try and had, furthermore, endeared his mem- 
ory to the Spaniards themselves. 

The mother of the Gracchi was Cornelia, 
daughter of Africanus Scipio, the greatest 
Roman hero of the previous generation. Of 
the twelve sons and one daughter born of 
this union, only the daughter and two sons 
lived to maturity. The two stirviving sons 
were the first born, Tiberius Sempronius 
Gracchus, born about 166 B.C., and his 
brother Gaius, nine years younger. 

Few young Romans were afforded the 
opportunity of such close relations and inter- 
course with the leading men of Rome as was 
Tiberius Gracchus in his early years. Even 
in boyhood his mind seems to have been of 
a serious cast, more interested in study and 
speculation than in the pleasures customary 
in youth. 



I04 THE' TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

In his father's house, which was to a large 
extent a common meeting place for all that 
was best in Roman society, he frequently 
heard the leading men of the city lament the 
disappearance from the country districts of 
the free citizens, and the attendant evils 
which seemed to be hovering over the Roman 
state. But what to his elders appeared 
lamentable principally on account of its 
effect upon the recruiting of the Roman 
legions, and consequently upon the control 
of Rome over her provinces and her foreign 
influence, was to young Tiberius an evil of 
a very different and more serious character. 
To him alone of this group did this condition 
appear as a great moral and social wrong — a 
wrong, moreover, whose effect would not be 
limited to the character of the soldiers in the 
Roman army, but which, if not remedied, 
would, like a cancer, eat out the very life of 
the Roman republic. Another difference was 
that those evils which brought forth from 
others languid, pessimistic, speculative reflec- 
tions roused in Tiberius Gracchus the deter- 
mination to action. 

Hardly was the boyhood of Tiberius over 
when his public life began. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 105 

"Scarcely had Tiberius assumed the garb of man- 
hood when he was elected into the college of augurs. 
At the banquet given to celebrate his installation, 
App. Claudius, the chief of the senate, offered him 
his daughter's hand in marriage. When the proud 
senator returned home, he told his wife that he had that 
day betrothed their daughter. *Ah,' she cried, 'she 
is too yoimg; it had been well to wait a while — unless, 
indeed, young Gracchus is the man.' Soon after his 
marriage he accompanied Scipio to Carthage, where he 
was the first to scale the walls 

"The personal importance of Gracchus was strength- 
ened by the marriage of Scipio with his only sister. 
But this marriage proved unhappy. Sempronia had 
no charms of person, and her temper was not good; 
Scipio's austere manners were little pleasing to a 
bride; nor were children bom to form a bond of union 
between them." (Liddell's History of Rome.) 

A brief taste of military life was added to 
the experience and training of Tiberius Grac- 
chus when he served, while a mere youth, 
in the capture of Carthage. 

His thirtieth year was spent as a quaestor 
in Spain. While traveling to and from this 
province he was forcibly impressed by the 
industrial and economic conditions in Etruria. 
Throughout this rich and extensive terri- 
tory the small freeholder seemed to have 
entirely disappeared, and the land was now 



io6 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

occupied by large estates cultivated by slaves. 
Tiberius returned to Rome just as the so- 
called "slave war" in Sicily broke out. This 
war not only called attention to the vast 
number and the depths of wretchedness of 
the slaves already in Italy and the adjoining 
island, but it also served to emphasize the 
perilous condition of a state whose foundation 
rested upon such a smoldering volcano. 

In this servile war the slaves throughout 
large portions of the island of Sicily arose 
in a body, murdered those of their masters 
who were not fortunate enough to escape, 
and selected a Syrian juggler as their king. 
A Greek slave, named Achaeus, proved not 
only a skillful commander in the field but 
also a capable organizer, and he soon mustered 
a large army containing both slaves and free 
laborers. Another leader, Cleon, a Silician 
slave, captured the important city of Agri- 
gentimi. The united forces defeated the 
Roman prastor Lucius Hypsseus, and tem- 
porarily drove the Romans out of Sicily. 

It was not until after three years of con- 
tinued warfare, after the Romans had suf- 
fered numerous defeats and great armies 
had been sent under three different Roman 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 107 

consuls, that the rebelHon in Sicily was finally- 
put down. 

Upon his return from Spain, and at the 
breaking out of the servile war, Tiberius 
Gracchus had not hesitated to freely express 
his feelings as to the cause of the existing 
evils, and as to the necessary remedies for 
their amelioration, and it was not long before 
that part of the Roman people who were 
dissatisfied with existing conditions turned to 
Gracchus as the only logical leader for the 
reform movement. As his views on the 
cause of the evils and the general character 
of the remedies which he proposed had been 
shown to the people by his speeches, Tiberius 
was elected tribune in 134 B.C., taking office 
on December 10 of that year. 

The reforms proposed by Tiberius Gracchus 
in the bill presented before the comitia trib- 
uta, almost immediately after his installation 
as tribune, were entirely of an economic 
character. In the field of mere political 
rights nothing more remained to be asked 
by the lowest of the Roman citizens; their 
pitiable condition was the result of the exist- 
ing agrarian situation. The agrarian bill 
proposed by Tiberius Gracchus, while a 



io8 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

radical departure from existing conditions, 
was neither illegal, confiscatory, nor unjust; 
it merely provided for a reassumption on the 
part of the state of land long held illegally 
by the "special interests" of the place 
and age. 

The agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus was 
in its main features merely a revival of the 
Licinian agrarian law of 367 B.C. By the 
original law (which for more than two cen- 
turies had been so flagrantly violated) it had 
been provided that no head of a family should 
hold more than five hundred jugera (a jugera 
being a little more than three fifths of an 
acre) of the public land. Tiberius proposed 
to reenact this law, but with the concession 
added that adult sons might hold each an 
additional two hundred and fifty jugera; but 
not more than one thousand jugera, in all, 
were to be held by any single family. Who- 
ever was unlawfully in possession of the public 
land was required to return the same, above 
the permitted maximimi, to the state; fair 
compensation, however, was to be allowed 
for improvements made by the holder of the 
land while it was in his possession. 

The law further provided that all public 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 109 

lands were to be placed under the control of 
three commissioners. This commission was 
to allot the public land, in small parcels, to 
such poor citizens as might apply for it. 
These new occupiers of the land were to hold 
it in perpetuity as tenants of the state, pay- 
ing a small annual rental. These estates 
were to descend to the children of the holders, 
but were not to be alienated, thus preventing 
the possibility of the land being once again 
gathered together into large estates. 

No valid objection could be made to the 
proposals of Tiberius Gracchus, which were 
merely the righting of one of the worst of 
the existing scandals of the Roman adminis- 
tration; a reform, moreover, which was to 
be carried out in such a manner as to give 
to the wrongdoers far greater consideration 
than that to which they were entitled. The 
law, however, dealt a heavy blow against 
the richest and most powerful class in Rome. 
The greater Roman capitalists had so long 
held possession, in utter defiance of the law, 
of the great bulk of the public lands of the 
state that their wrongful possessions had, 
in their eyes, ripened into a rightfvilly vested 
interest. 



no THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

An indirect method of attack has always 
been used by the opponents of Gracchus, 
both by the opponents of his own day and 
by those historians who have attempted to 
assail his memory. A recent historian, un- 
friendly both to Gracchus and to his demo- 
cractic reforms (Ferrero), refers to this bill 
as follows: 

"The bill was very favorably received by the 
peasants and the small proprietors. It appears also 
to have given great satisfaction to the clients, freemen, 
and artisans, who made up the proletariat of the 
metropolis; they fell into the not unnatural mistake 
— often made by the poor before and since — of regard- 
ing the greed of the rich, and the indifference of the 
government, as a sufficient explanation of their own 
distress." 

The ancient historian Plutarch thus refers 
to this contest: 

"Tiberius defending the matter, which of itself was 
good and just, with such eloquence as might have 
justified an evil cause, was invincible; and no man was 
able to argue against him to confute him, when, speak- 
ing in the behalf of the poor citizens of Rome (the 
people being gathered round about the pulpit for 
orations), he told them, that the wild beasts through 
Italy had their dens and caves of abode, and the men 
that fought, and were slain for their country, had 
nothing else but air and light, and so were compelled 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES iii 

to wander up and down with their wives and children, 
having no resting-place nor house to put their heads 
in. And that the captains do but mock their soldiers 
when they encourage them in battle to fight valiantly 
for the graves, the temples, their own houses, and their 
predecessors. For, said he, of such a nimiber of poor 
citizens as there be, there cannot a man of them show 
any ancient house or tomb of their ancestors, because 
the poor men go to the wars, and are slain for the 
rich men's pleasures and wealth; besides, they falsely 
call them lords of the earth, where they have not a 
handful of ground that is theirs. These and such other 
like words being uttered before all of the people with 
such vehemency and truth, so moved the common 
people withal, and put them in such a rage, that there 
was no adversary of his able to withstand him. There- 
fore, leaving to contradict and deny the law by argu- 
ment, the rich men put all their trust in Marcus 
Octavius, colleague and fellow-tribune in office, who 
was a grave and wise young man, and Tiberius' very 
famiHar friend. That the first time they came to 
him, to oppose him against the confirmation of this 
law, he prayed them to hold him excused, because 
Tiberius was his very friend. But, in the end, being 
compelled to it through the great number of the rich 
men that were importimate with him, he withstood 
Tiberius' law, which was enough to overthrow it." 

A more deep-dyed treachery than that to 
which Marcus Octavius at length consented is, 
fortunately, but seldom met with in history. 



112 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

It was a treachery not only to one of his 
closest friends, not only to the class which 
he represented and the voters who had elected 
him, but also to the character and traditions 
of the very ofhce which he held. The crea- 
tion of the office of tribune had been the first 
great victory won by the plebeians; the 
duties of those holding this ofiice had been 
to protect the lives and property, the rights 
and the liberties, of the weaker class in the 
community — the plebeians. 

To make it possible for the tribunes to 
give such protection, the veto had been 
granted to them. From the time when this 
power had first been secured by the tribunes 
down to the day when the agrarian law of 
Tiberius Gracchus came before the comitia 
tributa for its final decision, the veto power 
of the Roman tribune had been the greatest 
bulwark of the poor man of Rome. Now, 
in the greatest crisis of the long contest in 
Roman history of himian rights against 
class privileges, this power was to be the 
weapon by which a traitor was to secure the 
victory of the rich landowners over the great 
body of the Roman citizens. 

The day upon which the bill was to come 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 113 

before the comitia tributa found the Forum 
crowded with what was probably the largest 
number of citizens who, up to this time, had 
ever attended a meeting of this assembly. 
Tiberius Gracchus made his speech in favor 
of the law, which speech was received with 
great applause. The moment of his great 
triimiph was apparently just at hand. The 
clerk was about to read the words of the 
bill, before it was voted upon, when the rene- 
gade tribune Marcus Octavius stood up and 
forbade the clerk to read the bill. Gracchus 
was surprised and, for the time, helpless. 
After much bitter discussion, the meeting was 
adjourned; but Gracchus gave notice that he 
would take up his bill again upon the next 
regular meeting day of the comitia tributa. 

The cowardly treachery of his colleague, 
instead of discouraging Tiberius Gracchus, 
merely spurred him on to greater efforts. His 
policy, formerly in the main a conciliatory 
one, now became militant. In retaliation 
for the veto of Octavius he too made use 
of this power. Indeed, a more thorough and 
effective use of this power than that made 
by Gracchus at this time can hardly be 
imagined. A veto was put upon the exercise 



114 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

of any of his functions by any of the Roman 
officials; even the treasury was shut up and 
the courts of justice discontinued. As the 
great landowners had now forfeited all claims 
to consideration on account of the methods 
which they had adopted, the compensation 
clauses were struck out of the bill, which in 
its amended form simply provided that the 
state should resume possession of all lands 
held in contravention of the Licinian Law. 
Even in this amended form there was nothing 
revolutionary about the bill; it was merely 
the reenactment of a law which already 
existed, and should have been in operation. 

On the second day when the bill came before 
the comitia an attempt was again made to 
read the law, and this was again prevented 
by the veto of the tribune Octavius. Party 
feeling by this time ran so high that a riot 
seemed inevitable. Trouble was for the time 
averted by an agreement to refer the matter 
to the Senate. 

A few months before, Gracchus' name would 
have possessed great influence in the Senate, 
and, furthermore, a number of the senators — 
the most patriotic and clear sighted, who saw 
the dangers with which Rome was confonted 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 115 

— had in the beginning sympathized with 
Gracchus in the objects which he sought. 
By this time, however, Gracchus had lost 
all the sympathy and support which he had 
ever possessed in this direction. This is 
sometimes explained by saying that Tiberius 
Gracchus had alienated all the conservative 
elements in his support by the intemperance 
of his actions. Such an explanation cannot 
stand the scrutiny of history. The proposals 
and objects of Gracchus were never an3rthing 
but moderate — never anything more than 
the claim that the existing laws must be 
enforced. The methods of Gracchus were 
not only strictly legal but also strictly con- 
ventional and usual, until the disgraceful 
tactics of his opponents constrained him to 
more forcible action. 

At this time Tiberius Gracchus, meeting 
only reproaches from the senators, who were 
enraged at him because he had called -atten- 
tion to and made an issue of a state of politi- 
cal corruption from which their class had 
benefited for generations, returned to the 
comitia. Upon his return the meeting was 
again dissolved; but before it had adjourned 
Gracchus gave notice that he would still 



ii6 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

again bring up his measure before the comitia 
tributa, on its next regular meeting day, and 
that if Marcus Octavius again interposed the 
veto power to prevent a vote being taken 
upon the bill, he would move the people that 
Octavius be deposed as tribune. 

Before the day for the next meeting of the 
comitia tributa arrived, Gracchus appears 
to have made every effort to induce his col- 
league and former friend to recede from his 
position. All efforts in this direction, how- 
ever, proving ineffectual, Gracchus immedi- 
ately upon the assembling of the comitia 
moved that the tribune Marcus Octavius 
be removed from office. Of the first seven- 
teen tribes to vote, each, by a unanimous 
or practically unanimous vote, was in favor 
of the deposition of Octavius. Before the 
vote of the eighteenth tribe was taken, 
Gracchus made a final appeal to Octavius to 
withdraw his opposition. After some hesita- 
tion Octavius refused, and the vote of the 
next tribe furnished the required majority 
for his deposition. 

For the first time in a popular government 
the principle of the right of the people to 
recall an unworthy public official had been 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 117 

put into practical operation. A more fitting 
occasion for this action can hardly be imag- 
ined. 

The action of Tiberius Gracchus in adopting 
this innovation has been bitterly denounced, 
and as strongly defended. One of the liberal 
historians refers to this action as follows: 

"These acts of Tiberius Gracchus are commonly 
said to have been tl;e beginning of revolution at Rome; 
and the gmlt of it is accordingly laid at his door. And 
there can be no doubt that he was guilty in the sense 
that a man is guilty who introduces a Hght into some 
chamber filled with explosive vapour, which the stu- 
pidity or malice of others has suffered to acomiulate. 
But, after all, too much is made of this violation of 
constitutional forms and the sanctity of the tribunate. 
The first were effete, and all regular means of reno- 
vating the republic seemed to be closed to the despair- 
ing patriot, by stolid obstinacy sheltering itself under 
the garb of law and order. The second was no longer 
what it had been — the recognised refuge and defence 
of the poor. The rich, as Tiberius in effect argued, 
had found out how to use it also. If all men who 
set the example of forcible infringement of law are 
criminals, Gracchus was a criminal. But in the world's 
annals he sins in good company; and when men con- 
demn him, they should condemn Washington also. 
Perhaps his failure has had most to do with his con- 
demnation. But if ever a revolution was excusable 
this was; for it was carried not by a small party for 



ii8 THE- TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

small aims, but by national acclamations, by the 
voices of Italians who flocked to Rome to vote. How 
far Gracchus saw the inevitable effects of his acts is 
open to dispute. But probably he saw it as clearly 
as any man can see the future. Because he was 
generous and enthusiastic, it is assumed that he was 
sentimental and weak, and that his policy was guided 
by impulse rather than reason. There seems little to 
sustain such a judgment other than the desire of writers 
to emphasise a comparison between him and his 
brother." (A. H. Beesly, in The Gracchi, Marius and 
Sulla.) 

The procedure adopted by Gracchus on 
this occasion was unknown to the law, but 
it is hard to say that it was against the law. 
If this action was unconstitutional, and 
revolutionary, so had been every change 
which had ever been made in the fundamental 
principles of Roman public law. The truth 
of the matter was that Rome had neither a 
written constitution nor any law governing 
the method by which its fundamental law 
might be changed. Rome, in this respect, 
was constantly in a position similar to that 
in which the state of Rhode Island found 
herself in 1841. The old colonial charter, 
which after the separation from England had 
been continued in force as a state constitution, 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 119 

was no longer suitable for existing conditions, 
and there was a general feeling among the 
inhabitants of the state that the old charter 
must give way to a new state constitution. 
A difficulty, however, here presented itself 
in the fact that the old colonial charter, 
having been granted by royal authority, con- 
tained no provision as to its amendment by 
act of the people. In this situation the 
people of the state were compelled to go out- 
side of their organic law, and, disregarding 
the old charter, to adopt a new constitution 
and form of government. All this was not 
accomplished, however, without much con- 
fusion and an incipient civil war. 

Similarly situated, Tiberius Gracchus was 
now obliged to go beyond the letter of the 
existing law, and to vindicate the underly- 
ing principle of Roman law that the duty 
of the tribune was the protection of the 
rights of the people, by introducing a new 
political expedient into the scheme of Ro- 
man government. 

Upon the deposition of Octavius the agra- 
rian law of Gracchus was immediately passed 
by acclamation. Three commissioners were 
appointed to carry out the provisions of the 



I20 THE. TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

bill — Tiberius Gracchus, his brother Gaius, 
and Appius Claudius, the father-in-law of 
Tiberius Gracchus. 

For a time the success and popularity of 
Gracchus was at its zenith; the commis- 
sioners, appointed to allot the land, ener- 
getically prosecuted the work, and the great 
landowners became more and more bitter as 
they saw their illegal gains about to be wrested 
from them. 

One difficulty in the carrying out of the 
agrarian law was due to the fact that the 
poverty of the mass of the Roman citizens 
was such that very few who desired to secure 
an allotment of land were possessed of, or 
could secure, the necessary money to stock 
the new farms and to erect the necessary 
buildings. When, therefore, at this crisis, 
it was learned that Attalus Philometor, the 
recently deceased king of Pergamus, in Asia 
Minor, had made the Roman people his 
heirs, bequeathing to them both his kingdom 
and all his private lands and treasures, 
Gracchus grasped at this opportunity to 
overcome the difficulty experienced by the 
agrarian commission. He proposed a law 
providing that all the money so received 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 121 

should be used to furnish the necessary 
stock for those to whom the public land was 
assigned. About the same time another 
law was enacted, apparently not proposed by 
Tiberius Gracchus, providing that the Agra- 
rian Commission (called the triimiviri) should 
have final jurisdiction in all controversies 
over the question as to whether any particular 
piece of land was public or private land. 
The capitalistic party, setting an example 
which has been so often followed in our own 
country and in our own day, now attempted 
to divert the issue from the reforms being 
put into operation through the energy of 
Gracchus, by personal attacks upon the 
tribune himself; he was accused of having 
received a purple robe and diadem from the 
envoy of the late king of Pergamus; of 
having violated the Roman constitution; of 
desiring to make himself king over Rome. 
Only vindictive partisanship could find any 
basis upon which to allege the truth of any 
of these charges except perhaps that of a 
technical violation of the Roman constitu- 
tion in the deposition of Octavius. The ex- 
treme party in the Senate, led by Publius 
Scipio Nasica, were openly plotting the death 



122 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

of Tiberius Gracchus, either by assassination 
or by judicial proceedings, as soon as his term 
of office should expire. 

The violent position taken by his opponents 
clearly showed to Tiberius Gracchus that 
both his reforms and his life were in danger. 
It was evident that neither the agrarian 
reforms nor the life of Gracchus would be 
safe after he had ceased to hold the office of 
tribune, and the course of events finally 
drove Tiberius into becoming a candidate 
for reelection. To strengthen his hold upon 
the people he prepared three new laws. The 
first law diminished the required period of 
military service; the second law changed 
the procedure in the higher courts of law, and 
permitted the jurors to be selected from 
all persons possessing a certain amount of 
property, instead of (as previously) restricting 
the selection to members of the Senate; the 
third law created the right of appeal from the 
courts of law to the assembly of the people 
in all cases. 

The scenes at the election in June, 133 B.C., 
when Tiberius Gracchus for the second time 
came before the comitia tributa as a candi- 
date for election as tribune, were among the 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 123 

most tumultuous in all Roman political his- 
tory. Upon the first day of voting the first 
tribe gave its vote for the reelection of Tibe- 
rius Gracchus; upon this, his opponents imme- 
diately raised a protest, declaring that no 
one could be twice, in succession, elected to 
the office of tribune. The debate on this 
question developed into such a tumult that 
any further business became an impossi- 
bility, and the meeting was adjourned until 
the next day. 

The friends of Tiberius were now thor- 
oughly alarmed for his safety. A large 
throng accompanied him to his home, and 
kept watch before his doors all night. Before 
going to the comitia tributa in the morning 
Tiberius is reported to have told his friends 
that if he considered himself in danger, 
during the day's proceedings, and thought it 
necessary for his friends to repel force by 
force, he would raise his hand to his head. 
No means seems to have been adopted, how- 
ever, for any concerted or effectual resistance, 
and none of his friends who attended the 
meeting of the comitia tributa went armed. 

On the morning of the second meeting of 
the comitia tributa the Senate also met 



124 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

f 

close by in the temple of Faith. Nasica 

demanded of the consul Scsevola, who pre- 
sided, to take steps to prevent the reelection 
of Tiberius Gracchus. The consul refused to 
interfere. At this stage one of the senators, 
Fulvius Flaccus, who was friendly to Tiberius, 
hastened from the temple to inform him that 
his death was about to be resolved upon by 
the Senate. Upon hearing this news the 
friends of Gracchus began hastily to arm 
themselves with staves, for the protection 
of their leader, and Gracchus gave the agreed 
signal by raising his hand to his head. 

Seizing every opportunity to attack the 
motives of Gracchus, his opponents raised 
the cry that he was asking for a crown, and 
this report was carried into the Senate. 
Nasica, the bitterest of the enemies of Grac- 
chus and of his reforms, shouted, "The 
consul is betraying the republic! Those who 
would save their country, follow me!" and 
rushed out from the meeting of the Senate. 
He was followed by many of the senators, 
and by their slaves and adherents, those 
who were not already armed breaking up 
the benches to make clubs for themselves. 
The followers of Gracchus, without any 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 125 

organization among themselves, were unable 
to offer effectual resistance to the attack, and 
soon fled in all directions. Tiberius Gracchus 
attempted to take refuge in the temple of 
Jupiter, but the priests closed the doors 
against him, and, stumbling over a bench, 
he was killed by repeated blows on the head 
before he could rise. In this riot more than 
three hundred of the followers of Gracchus 
were killed by clubs, or by being driven over 
the wall at the edge of the Tarpeian rock. 
The hatred toward Tiberius Gracchus, on the 
part of the special interests of the time, did 
not end with his murder. Gaius Gracchus was 
refused permission, which he sought, to bury 
his brother, and it was decreed by the Senate 
that the bodies of Tiberius Gracchus and 
his followers should be thrown into the Tiber 
before daybreak on the following morning. 

Very divergent views have been taken of 
the conduct of Tiberius Gracchus and that 
of his opponents by different classes of histo- 
rians. Historians, equally with politicians, 
inevitably fall into one of the two classes 
into which mankind is divided, the class of 
the radicals on the one hand, or of the con- 
servatives on the other; into the class of those 



126 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

who favor progress and the recognition of 
the supreme right of manhood, or into the 
class of those who wish to keep things as 
they are, and worship before the shrine of 
vested interests. No single incident in his- 
tory better serves to bring out the bias of the 
historian than does that of the efforts of 
Tiberius Gracchus in behalf of his agrarian 
law. No historian can write this page of 
Roman history without throwing open for 
the inspection of the world the inmost work- 
ings of his mind and sympathies. That 
class of historians who can see more pathos 
in the execution of King Louis XVI than in 
the combined misery of the downtrodden 
millions who lived and died in France under 
the two centuries of Bourbon misrule, have 
attempted to cast upon Tiberius Gracchus 
the stigma of a demagogue, of a reckless 
leader, of a violator of his country's most 
fundamental laws; while the conduct of the 
leaders of the conservative party, who did 
not hesitate at the crisis to resort even to 
murder rather than surrender their unlawful 
profits, is excused as being rendered necessary 
by the violence of Tiberius Gracchus. 

Yet there are few prominent characters 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 127 

in whose public actions the impartial critic 
can find so little to criticize as in that of 
the greatest of all Roman tribunes — Tibe- 
rius Gracchus. At the outset the whole 
policy of Gracchus was moderate and even 
conciliatory, and it was only the unyielding 
selfishness of the great landowners which 
forced him into a position where he must 
either surrender all for which he was fighting 
or adopt a more vigorous plan of campaign; 
which, finally, against his will, compelled him 
to adopt those tactics for which he has been 
so severely censured by certain historians. 

The legality of the deposition of Octavius 
has already been discussed. It only remains 
to consider the action of Tiberius Gracchus 
in presenting himself as a candidate for 
reelection as tribune. Of the vital necessity 
for this action, both to secure the enforce- 
ment of the agrarian law and the personal 
safety of Tiberius himself, there can be no 
doubt. It must be admitted, however, that 
this by itself is not a sufficient defense of 
the action of Gracchus on this occasion. 
The fundamental principles of government in 
any country cannot, generally, be safely vio- 
lated merely to meet a temporary exigency. 



128 the' two great republics 

The worst possible government is generally- 
better, for those who are to live under it, 
than anarchy; and the condition of a country 
where laws can be habitually broken with 
impunity is but one step from that of a coun- 
try where no laws exist. The breaking of a 
law with good motives is often more disas- 
trous than the breaking of it with bad inten- 
tions; because in a former case an example 
is set which, being looked upon with approval 
by a large class of the best people in the 
community, is apt to furnish a precedent for 
future violations of the law, with the worst 
motives and for the most dangerous purposes. 
No true republic can long continue to exist 
unless a sense of reverence for and obedience 
to law is bred into the mass of its citizens. 
The right of overthrowing a corrupt govern- 
ment and of establishing a new civic system 
must ever reside with the people; but such a 
right must be resorted to only as an extreme, 
exceptional, and desperate remedy, and the 
frequent recurrence of revolutions and rebel- 
lions in a republic results in a substitution 
of the rule of force for the peaceful rule of 
the majority, and is inconsistent with any 
true idea of democracy. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 129 

If, then, Tiberius Gracchus had attempted 
to override the fundamental law of Rome 
for the purpose of obtaining some temporary- 
personal or partisan advantage he might 
well have deserved the attacks which have 
been made upon his memory. Tiberius Grac- 
chus, however, violated no provision of the 
Roman constitution. No evidence exists 
that there was ever any law making a Roman 
tribune ineligible for reelection. 

The prohibition would seem to have arisen 
from long-continued custom rather than from 
law, and to have been of a character not 
unsimilar to the so-called "conventions of 
the English Constitution," or to the rule in 
this country that no man shall be elected for 
a third term as President. If a law declaring 
a tribune to be ineligible for reelection was 
ever enacted in Rome (and with the absence 
of a full list of Roman laws this is a point 
on which absolute certainty is impossible) 
it was, in all probability, of a directory rather 
than a mandatory character. Such was the 
character of all Roman laws relative to the 
qualification of officers. Thus, the Roman 
laws provided a regular order in which the 
principal offices at Rome should be held, 



130 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

and prohibited any person holding any office 
until he had held all those named before it 
on the list, and until he had reached a certain 
specified age. 

This law, while in the main followed, was 
frequently disregarded. The violations were 
in the main chargeable to the very class at 
Rome that was most bitter in the denuncia- 
tion of Tiberius Gracchus for offering himself 
as a candidate for reelection as tribune. 
Under the existing political conditions at 
Rome no great blame could be attached to 
an occasional disregard either of the law 
regulating the qualifications for office or the 
law, or custom, relative to the reelection of 
a tribune. It is only on this one occasion in 
Roman history that the violation of either 
of these laws was denounced as an attack on 
the Roman constitution. Even in the excit- 
ing days preceding the passage of the Licinian 
Laws the tribunes Licinius and Sextius were 
reelected year after year, without the legality 
of their election being questioned. Only 
ten years after the death of Tiberius Gracchus 
the reelection to the office of tribune of his 
brother, Gaius Gracchus, was permitted. It 
is a striking comment upon the fairness of 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 131 

some of the historians who attack Tiberius 
Gracchus for his alleged violation of the law 
that they are able to find excuses for the 
action of that branch of the senatorial party 
whose members were so unwilling to sur- 
render to the state their illegal profits that 
they resorted to force to break up a meeting 
of the comitia tributa and to murder Grac- 
chus and three hundred of his adherents. 

The years which intervened between the 
tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus and that of 
his brother Gaius were filled with internal 
factional discord at Rome, but without any 
decisive results. Each party, in turn, was 
able to secure revenge upon its opponents, 
in the conflict connected with the death of 
Tiberius Gracchus. First, the popular party 
was successful in compelling Nasica to retire 
from Italy. Next, in 132 B.C., the Senate 
gave to the consuls a commission to inquire 
into the actions of those who had supported 
Tiberius Gracchus. By means of this com- 
mission the aristocratic party was enabled to 
bring about the execution of some of the 
partisans of Gracchus and the exile of others. 

For the time the leadership of the popular 
party had passed to C. Papirius Carbo, a 



132 THE" TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

man possessed both of the ability and the 
vices of the successful demagogue. He was 
one of those politicians who are always to 
be found in the forefront of every movement 
for liberty or reform, and who, by their 
hypocrisy and selfishness, do more to bring 
discredit upon the principles they champion 
than can possibly be done by the ablest of 
the opponents of such principles. No greater 
contrast can be imagined than is to be found 
in a comparison between Tiberius Gracchus 
and Carbo. In the case of the former we see 
a devotion to principle and to humanity 
which not even the fear of death could alter; 
in the case of Carbo, on the contrary, we can 
discover nothing but a striving for selfish 
ends and personal advancement. He ap- 
peared as a radical among radicals when this 
attitude seemed to ofier the shortest road 
to fame and fortune; and with equal facility 
he became the most abject tool of the sena- 
torial party when such a change of position 
seemed most likely to result to his personal 
benefit. 

Being elected a tribune, Carbo set himself 
to win the favor of the people by new popular 
legislation. He introduced and secured the 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 133 

passage of a bill extending the use of the 
ballot into the legislative assemblies of the 
people. His next measure, one to formally 
authorize the reelection of tribunes, was 
defeated. Gaius Gracchus made his first 
public speech in support of this measure. 

The work of the Agrarian Commission, in 
the meantime, had been progressing in spite 
of the murder of Tiberius Gracchus and the 
obstacles which the great landowners were 
constantly throwing in the way of the commis- 
sion. The Roman census shows that in the 
six years from 131 to 125 B.C. the number 
of burgesses was increased by seventy-six 
thousand; this increase was almost entirely 
due to the operation of the agrarian law, and 
the work of the commission. 

The vacancy in the Agrarian Commission 
made by the murder of Tiberius Gracchus 
had been first filled by the election of P. 
Licinius Crassus, father-in-law of Gaius Grac- 
chus. Upon the death of Crassus, and of 
Appius Claudius a few years later, these 
commissioners were succeeded by Carbo and 
Fulvius Flaccus, the latter being the senator 
who had attempted to warn Tiberius Gracchus 
of his danger, on the day of his death. 



134 THE" TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Carbo, for the time the guiding spirit of 
the commission, attempted to win addi- 
tional popularity by a vigorous policy in 
carrying out the agrarian law. Energetic 
action along this line was undoubtedly 
needed, as the great landowners had in many 
ways succeeded in blocking the work of the 
commission. The policy of Carbo, however, 
was that of the demagogue rather than that 
of the statesman, and the result of the 
methods which he adopted was a reaction 
which, for a time, completely put a stop to 
the work of the commission, split the popular 
party, and created a new political party or 
faction whose existence had an important 
influence upon the course of Roman political 
history during the next two generations. 

The first step taken by Carbo was the 
publication of a proclamation calling for 
information against owners of public land who 
had not voluntarily registered themselves 
as such. In theory such a proceeding was 
undoubtedly a proper mode of procedure 
against the large holders of public lands who 
were endeavoring to evade the agrarian law; 
but in practice it resulted in a great deal of 
hardship. Many of the good land titles 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 135 

throughout all Italy were without sufficient 
documentary proof; and many landowners, 
whose land was private, were yet at a loss 
for evidence to prove that their land was of 
this character when information against them 
was filed with the commission. 

The situation was a most delicate one, and 
one requiring the exercise of the highest 
degree of honesty, tact, good judgment, and 
diligence. None of these qualities was pos- 
sessed by Carbo. The commission acted in 
the most arbitrary manner and apparently 
declared a great deal of private land to 
belong to the public. The injustice seems 
to have been practiced not so much against 
the great landowners (Carbo appears even as 
early as this to have been falling under the 
influence of the aristocratic party) as against 
the small Latin and Italian landowners. The 
result was that the Latins and Italians, who 
had been among the truest of the adherents 
of Tiberius Gracchus, now became alienated 
from the Roman popular party under the 
leadership of Carbo, and began to come 
under the influence of the senatorial party. 

Politics made strange bedfellows two thou- 
sand years ago as well as now, and the new 



136 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

turn of the wheel of Roman poHtics brought 
in Scipio Africanus as the head of the Latins 
and Italians, and working in harmony with 
the Senate. 

The first action taken by Scipio was to 
introduce and secure the passage of a law 
taking away from the Agrarian Commission 
the judicial power by which it was enabled 
to decide questions as to the public or private 
character of lands and vesting such power 
in the consuls. This judicial power was 
then vested in the consul C. Sempronius 
Tuditanus; but he being soon sent to lUyria 
to conduct a military campaign against the 
lapydes, no person was left in Rome with 
the power to settle questions of this character. 
The work of the Agrarian Commission was 
now brought to a stop, and no further reas- 
srmiption or allotting of public lands could 
take place. Thus the great landowners were 
finally successful in destroying the effect of 
the agrarian legislation of Tiberius Gracchus. 

As this result began to make itself mani- 
fest, so great criticism arose against the 
action of Scipio that he felt called upon to 
announce that he would explain and defend 
his actions both before the Senate and before 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 137 

the people. In his speech before the Senate 
he carefully evaded all reference to the case 
of the great landowners who still continued 
illegally to hold large tracts of the public 
lands, and proclaimed his purpose to be to 
protect the Latin and Italian farmers whose 
small holdings of land were being wrongfully 
taken from them by the actions of the 
Agrarian Commission. These small farmers, 
sympathy for whom Scipio thus attempted 
to arouse, thus occupied the position held 
by those widows and orphans who to-day 
appear so prominently among the stock- 
holders of all law-breaking corporations. 

The speech of Scipio was naturally well 
received in the Senate; what its reception 
would have been on the second day, before 
the people in the Forum, is problematical. 
On the morning following his speech in the 
Senate Scipio was found dead in his bed. It 
is one of the unsolved mysteries of history 
whether Scipio died from natiu^al causes or 
was murdered. Nor is it more certain, if he 
was murdered, as to who his murderers were. 
Strong suspicion was directed against Carbo, 
and that hypocritical demagogue was driven 
into a temporary political retirement, from 



138 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

which he emerged a few years later as one 
of the most serviceable tools of the senatorial 
party. 

The importance, ability, and character of 
Scipio Africanus have been greatly over- 
praised by most historians. A. H. Beesly, 
however, in his work The Gracchi, Marius and 
Sulla, gives a discriminating criticism of this 
Roman general and statesman: 

"He is usually extolled as a patriot who would not 
stir to humour a Roman rabble, but who, when down- 
trodden honest farmers, his comrades in the wars, 
appealed to him, at once stepped into the arena as 
their champion. In reality he was a reactionist who, 
when the inevitable results of those liberal ideas which 
had been broached in his own circle stared him in 
the face, seized the first available means of stifling 
them. The world had moved too fast for him. As 
censor, instead of beseeching the gods to increase the 
glory of the State, he begged them to preserve it. 
Brave as a man, he was a pusillanimous statesman. 
It was well for his reputation that he died just then. 
Without Sulla's personal vices he might have played 
Sulla's part as a politician, and his atrocities in Spain 
as well as his remark on the death of Tiberius Gracchus 
• — words breathing the very essence of a narrow 
swordsman's nature — showed that from bloodshed at 
all events he would not have shrunk. It is hard to 
respect such a man in spite of all his good qualities. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 139 

Fortune gave him the opportunity of playing a great 
part, and he shrank from it. When the crop sprang 
up which he had himself helped to sow, he blighted it. 
But because he was personally respectable, and because 
he held a middle course between contemporary par- 
ties, he has found favour with historians, who are too 
apt to forget that there is in politics, as in other things, 
a right course and a wrong, and that to attempt to 
walk along both at once proves a man to be a weak 
statesman, and does not prove him to be a great or 
good man." 

The fillers in, who had occupied the stage 
of Roman politics for the years following the 
murder of Tiberius Gracchus, were now 
removed, and the stage was being rapidly- 
set for the second and final act of the great 
historical tragedy of the Gracchi. 

The political problems which confronted 
Rome at the time of the death of Scipio 
rapidly reached such an acute state that it 
became evident the solution of these prob- 
lems, and the preservation of the Roman 
republic, must be the work of a Man, not of 
a manikin or a demagogue. At this crisis 
Rome was blessed with the best of fortune, 
only to be immediately thereafter cursed with 
the worst of misfortune. The good fortune 
consisted in the fact that at this time the 



I40 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

man presented himself for the work; the bad 
fortune arose from the refusal of Rome to 
avail herself of his work. 

The agitation of Carbo had added to the 
bitter contest between rich and poor, and 
one perhaps still more bitter, at least tempo- 
rarily, between Romans and Italians. An 
attempt was made to reconcile the differ- 
ences between the Romans and Italians by 
means of a compromise, by the terms of which 
the Italians were to consent to the carrying 
out of the Agrarian Law, and in return were 
to be admitted to Roman citizenship. This 
last proposal was viewed with great alarm 
by the Roman proletariat, most of whom 
were by this time possessed of nothing in 
the world except the rights and privileges of 
Roman citizenship, and who saw that the 
value of such rights and privileges would 
be greatly diminished by the great increase 
now proposed in the number of those by whom 
such rights and privileges were to be enjoyed. 

The Italians, on their side, delighted at the 
prospect of obtaining these rights, began to 
come to Rome in great numbers. This 
migration added fuel to the flame, and in 
126 B.C. the tribune, Junius Pennus, proposed 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 141 

an alien act by which foreigners were com- 
pelled to leave Rome. The law was passed, 
with unpleasant consequences at a later date. 
For the second time in his life Gains Gracchus 
made a public speech, on this occasion appear- 
ing on the losing side. 

The following year Gaius Gracchus served 
as quaestor and was sent to Sardinia under 
the consul Aurelius Orestes. The Senate, 
and the oHgarchical party in general, had by 
this time come to regard the young Gaius 
Gracchus with mingled fear and suspicion, 
and in disregard of the laws he was first 
ordered to remain a second year in Sardinia, 
and later to remain a third year. 

In the meantime, at Rome, events had been 
moving rapidly. Fulvius Flaccus, the old 
friend of Tiberius Gracchus, had been elected 
consul and had brought in a bill extending 
the franchise to all the Latin and Italian 
allies. Shortly thereafter, before the bill 
had been voted upon, Flaccus had been sent 
by the Senate upon foreign service, and the 
bill was sidetracked. The disappointment 
at such a result on the part of those who 
were denied the right of suffrage, after they 
had believed it won, culminated in the 



142 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

rebellion of the Latin city of Fregellae. The 
force with which the city was reduced to 
submission, and the severity with which the 
outbreak was punished, destroyed any further 
thought on the part of the Latins and Italians 
of attempting to secure their rights by force, 
but increased the silent discontent of these 
people. 

It was with these conditions existing at 
Rome that Gaius Gracchus returned to the 
city after two and one-half years' absence 
in Sardinia, defying the Senate by disobey- 
ing its order to finish out his third year in 
the island. 

The censors were in office at the time of 
the return of Gaius Gracchus to Rome, and 
his enemies succeeded in having him sum- 
moned before them immediately to answer 
for his alleged misconduct in leaving the 
post to which he had been assigned by the 
Senate. It was hoped that the censors could 
be induced to denounce him, which action 
would have rendered him ineligible to hold 
public office. Gracchus, however, so strongly 
defended himself in a speech to the people 
that the censors did not dare take any action 
against him. In his speech he relied on 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 143 

the well-established principle of the Roman 
law at that time, that the Senate had no 
authority to compel him to serve as quaestor 
for a longer period than one year. As to 
his own conduct in the exercise of the ofhce 
of quaestor he said, "No one can say that I 
have received a penny in presents, or have 
put any one to charges on my own account. 
The purse which I took out full I have brought 
back empty; though I could name persons 
who took out casks filled with wine and 
brought them home charged with money." 

Upon his acquittal Gaius Gracchus became 
a candidate for the office of tribune, and was 
elected, in spite of the most strenuous oppo- 
sition of the senatorial party and of the great 
landowners. However, the opposition to him 
was so strong that, in the number of votes 
received, he stood only fourth in the list of 
successful candidates. 

Before entering upon the work of Gaius 
Gracchus as Roman tribune it is admissible 
to stop for a moment to compare the charac- 
ters, natures, and abilities of Tiberius and 
Gaius Gracchus. The general judgment of 
history seems to assign a far higher place to 
Gaius Gracchus than to his elder brother. 



144 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

How far such a view is correct is certainly 
questionable. It is a view based largely 
upon the longer term of office, the more 
spectacular reforms, and the more dramatic 
death of the younger brother. Without de- 
tracting in any degree from the high character 
and motives, and the wonderful ability, of 
Gains Gracchus, it may still be said that 
the higher niche in the temple of history 
more properly belongs to Tiberius. 

To Tiberius belongs that special honor 
which properly attaches itself to the pioneer; 
perhaps, most of all, to the pioneer in the 
field of political, social, or economic reforms. 
In the case of Tiberius, his career was delib- 
erately entered upon, as the result of his 
profound study and keen observation, acting 
upon his naturally strong Roman patriotism, 
hatred of wrong and oppression, and sym- 
pathy for himianity. Whether the career 
of Gains would have taken the direction 
which it did but for the memory and influence 
of his brother, is problematical. It is certain 
that the strongest motive which urged him 
onward in his career as tribune was the all- 
mastering desire and determination to avenge 
the murder of his brother, and to vindicate 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 145 

his memory by carrying his measures through 
to a triumphant conclusion. It might almost 
be said that the mainspring of the career of 
Tiberius was his love for Rome, while the 
mainspring of the career of Gaius was his 
love for his brother. 

Tiberius Gracchus was the greater states- 
man; Gaius Gracchus the better politician. 
Tiberius could see more clearly the great 
outlines of what lay at a distance; Gaius 
could discern more exactly the details of 
what was close at hand. If the political 
activities of the two brothers could have 
been at the same time, each would have 
supplemented the other, and it is possible 
that their combined efforts might have been 
sufficient to secure the accomplishment of 
their purposes. 

In many respects Gaius Gracchus surpassed 
his brother in ability. The younger brother 
is generally conceded to have been the great- 
est orator who, up to that time, had ever 
lived in Rome; while Cicero, unfriendly both 
to Gaius Gracchus personally and to his 
measures, lamented his early death as a loss 
to Roman literature. It is also probable 
that Gaius was superior to his brother in 
10 



146 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

executive ability and in his wonderful capac- 
ity for hard work. Against that must be set 
the greater vision displayed by Tiberius 
Gracchus, in the character and details of 
his proposed reforms. There was nothing 
in the measure proposed by the elder Grac- 
chus which conflicts with either justice, the 
soundest principles of statesmanship, or of 
political economy; nor was there any feature 
which seemed to have been inserted in those 
measures merely as a bid for popularity or 
for votes. 

Unfortunately, as much cannot be said for 
the reforms of Gaius Gracchus; some of the 
provisions of the laws which he proposed were 
unsound in theory and dangerous in practice, 
and were probably brought forward merely 
as a bid for popularity. Provisions of this 
character were not numerous enough, or im- 
portant enough, to detract from the general 
merit of the reforms proposed by Gaius Grac- 
chus, but their presence in his bills would 
seem to indicate on his part a less compre- 
hensive grasp of political principles than that 
possessed by his brother. 

It is a striking illustration of the irony 
which fate sometimes makes use of, that the 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 147 

only part of the measures brought forward by 
the Gracchi which were permitted to have a 
permanent influence upon Roman life and 
history were the questionable measures of 
Gaius Gracchus. 

In their temperaments Tiberius appears 
the calmer, Gaius possessing the more fiery 
disposition. Tiberius, throughout his career, 
continued to exercise the highest degree of 
control over both his feelings and his actions. 
While fighting for principles which he believed 
essential to the safety and welfare of Rome 
he manifested surprisingly little animosity 
toward his opponents. Even in the deposi- 
tion of Octavius he seems to have been free 
from personal malice, as is indicated by his 
attempt to secure a reconciliation with his 
brother tribune after seventeen out of the 
necessary eighteen tribunes had voted in 
favor of the deposition of the latter. 

Gaius, embittered by the murder of his 
brother Tiberius, developed a hatred toward 
his opponents which time never healed. 
Patience and judgment led him to bide his 
time and prepare for the contest which he 
considered as fated, and for the revenge upon 
which he was determined. 



148 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

His character might be fitly described in 
the words of Thomas Moore as one of those 

"Spirits of fire, that brood not long, 

But flash resentment back for wrong; 
And hearts where, slow but deep, the seeds 
Of vengeance ripen into deeds." 

The desire to avenge the death of his 
brother was indeed the central idea of Gaius 
Gracchus throughout his whole political 
career. It is when we look at his work from 
this viewpoint that much which appears 
contradictory or obscure becomes easy to 
appreciate and understand. 

One of the first steps taken by Gaius 
Gracchus in the reform campaign under- 
taken by him was an attempt to divide the 
ranks of those who had opposed his brother. 
The oligarchical party had for many genera- 
tions been composed of two different elements 
united for mutual protection, but whose 
interests, in many respects, were mutually 
antagonistic. The object of Gracchus was 
to break the political union between the two 
factions by arousing the points of antagonism. 

The two elements in the aristocratic party 
above referred to were the senatorial families 
and the wealthy mercantile interests. The 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 149 

general line of demarcation between the two 
classes was the distinction between the aris- 
tocracy of money and the aristocracy of 
birth, generally to be found wherever aris- 
tocracies exist. The senators, with few excep- 
tions, were recruited from the old families 
which had been prominent in Rome for 
generations and even for centuries. The 
majority of the members were of patrician 
descent, but the distinction between patri- 
cian and plebeian was now of little, or no, 
practical importance. Some of the senatorial 
families were wealthy, others were not ; where 
wealth was possessed it generally consisted of 
large landed estates. All members of the Sen- 
ate, whether rich or poor, were possessed of 
valuable political rights and opportunities. 

The other element of the aristocracy in- 
cluded the merchants and speculators, who 
had control of the financial affairs of the 
city and of the government, and who had 
been rapidly accumulating large fortunes, 
during the period which had elapsed since 
the Punic Wars. Gracchus played for the 
support of this element at the same time that 
he assailed the power of the Senate. 

By the terms of the Calpurnian Law, 



ISO THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

passed in 149 B.C., it had been provided that 
all provincial magistrates accused of dis- 
honesty in their administration should be 
tried before the praetor peregrinus and a 
jury selected from the Senate. It was now 
voted that the jury should be taken not from 
the Senate but from a body of three hundred 
men selected from all Roman citizens who 
possessed the amount of property which 
entitled a person to be enrolled among the 
equites. From the standpoint of judicial 
reform the fairness of this act could not be 
questioned. However gross might have been 
the misgovernment of any provincial Roman 
official, it was generally impossible to secure a 
conviction before a senatorial jury. As one 
historian (Liddell) sums up the matter: 

"These courts had given little satisfaction. In 
all important cases of corruption, especially such as 
occurred in the provinces, the offenders were them- 
selves senators. Some of the judges had been guilty 
of like offences; extortion was looked upon as a venial 
crime; prosecutions became a trial of party strength, 
and the culprit was usually absolved." 

Equally important in the eyes of Gaius 
Gracchus, to the judicial reform thus effected, 
was the effect which the law had toward 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 151 

raising the equites to a position where, as 
an order, they would be a formidable rival 
to the Senate. As a further bid for the sup- 
port of the moneyed aristocracy as against 
the old landed aristocracy and the aristoc- 
racy of birth, Gracchus, in providing for the 
levying of new taxes in the province of Asia, 
proposed the innovation of having the tax 
farmed out at Rome, instead of in the prov- 
ince itself. 

Another law did away with an old estab- 
lished abuse in the assignment of provinces 
by the Senate to pro-consuls. Heretofore, 
each consul had had his province assigned to 
him after his election, and the most desirable 
provinces had therefore fallen to those toward 
whom the Senate was the most friendly. It 
was now decreed that the provinces for the 
two consuls for each year should be assigned 
before the election of the consuls, and that 
the consuls should determine, either by 
agreement or by lot, which of the two prov- 
inces should fall to each. 

The first of the economic measures of Gaius 
Gracchus was one to renew and extend the 
agrarian law of his brother. In connection 
with this law the right to decide whether land 



152 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

was public or private was once more given 
to the Agrarian Commission, and provisions 
were also made providing that new colonies 
should be founded in different parts of Italy 
and also in the provinces. The carrying 
into execution of this last provision was to 
be postponed until the following year. The 
proposal to found colonies beyond the limits 
of Italy marked an innovation both in Roman 
law and in the economic habits and customs 
of the Romans. 

Another law provided that the Roman 
government should undertake the work of 
providing grain for its citizens; that every 
person possessing the Roman franchise should 
have the right of purchasing grain from the 
government at the price of six and a third 
asses per modius (the set price being far under 
the market value); and that the losses sus- 
tained in this grain trade should be taken out 
of the public treasury. Of all the proposed 
reforms of the Gracchi this is the least defen- 
sible, and the one which had the greatest 
influence upon the future. Lord Macaulay, 
in the course of his speech made on the third 
reading of the great English Reform Bill 
of 1832, said; 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 153 

"The defect is not in the Refonn Bill, but in the 
very nature of government. On the physical condition 
of the great body of people government acts not as a 
specific, but as an alterative. Its operation is power- 
ful, indeed, and certain, but gradual and indirect. 
The end of government is not directly to make the 
people rich, but to protect them in making them- 
selves rich — and a government which attempts more 
than this is precisely the government which is likely 
to perform less. Governments do not and cannot 
support the people. We have no miraculous powers 
— and we have not the rod of the Hebrew lawgiver — 
we cannot rain down bread on the multitude from 
Heaven — we cannot smite the rock and give them to 
drink. We can give them only freedom to employ 
their industry to the best advantage, and security in 
the enjoyment of what their industry has acquired." 

The fundamental principles of the science 
of government and_ political economy, so 
forcibly expressed by Lord Macaulay on this 
occasion, and which must be both under- 
stood and appHed by every successful law- 
maker, were throughout his career thoroughly 
realized by Tiberius Gracchus, and were 
also generally appreciated by his younger 
brother. On this occasion, however, Gaius 
Gracchus lost sight of, or recklessly disre- 
garded, all the basic principles of the true 
science of government or economics. If it 



154 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

became the permanent policy of Rome to 
provide food for a great proportion of her 
citizens, this could only result finally in their 
permanent pauperization. The effect of this 
law was certain to be the opposite of that 
sought by the agrarian laws of the two 
Gracchi. 

The object of the latter laws was to bring 
the Roman citizens, or as many of them as 
possible, "back to the soil"; to develop once 
more that race of hardy Roman peasants, 
whose arms had won the great military vic- 
tories of the Roman republic; and to reduce 
both the nimibers and the influence of the 
unemployed and dangerous proletariat of the 
city. The law as to the sale of grain was 
not only certain to have an influence in an 
exactly opposite direction to that which would 
be exerted by the agrarian law, if this latter 
law could be put into successful operation, 
but, more than this, the operation of the 
grain law would render the success of the 
agrarian law far more difficult and doubtful. 
The truth of the matter was that the success 
of the agrarian law was endangered not 
only by the opposition of the aristocracy but 
also by the present character of the Roman 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 155 

proletariat. The course of events at Rome 
during the previous century and a half had 
done much to destroy the stamina of the 
mass of the Roman people; and a life of 
economic independence, as the result of hard 
labor in the country, held less attractions 
for the majority of this class than an easily 
secured, though meager, living in the city. 
Anything which rendered life in Rome easier 
and more pleasant made it so much the 
harder to induce Roman citizens to settle on 
the farms. No legislation ever yet passed in 
Rome had aroused such immediate and uni- 
versal enthusiasm among the poorer classes 
at Rome as did this law relative to the sale 
of grain. 

This law, the worst of those proposed by 
the Gracchi, was destined to have the greatest 
influence of any of those laws upon the course 
of development of Roman history. It is a 
peculiar phenomenon to be observed in the 
study of the psychology of dishonesty that 
while the beneficiaries of any system of 
"graft" will fight to the last extremity 
against any infringement upon their interests, 
sometimes even, as was the case with French 
nobility at the time of the French Revolution, 



is6 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

carrying their resistance to such limits as to 
involve themselves and their country in a 
common ruin; nevertheless, it is often easy 
to induce these favored interests to assist in 
the establishment of some other system of 
"graft" for the benefit of certain classes of 
their opponents. 

When a class has become so blinded to 
the true standard of right and wrong, and 
of relative values, as to look upon special 
privileges for the few against the many, 
and long-continued systems of dishonesty, 
as "vested interests," it seems to be much 
easier for them to submit to wrongful exac- 
tions from others than to cease from such 
wrongful exactions themselves. Thus, in the 
case of the grain laws at Rome, the aristo- 
cratic party, unrelenting in their opposition 
to the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, which 
would put an end to long-continued robbing 
of the state and go far toward building up 
again a class of free yeoman landowners, 
without opposition acquiesced in the estab- 
lishment of a system of wholesale exploitation 
of the state for the maintenance at the public 
expense of a lazy, worthless, and corrupt mob. 

The fatal idea contained in the grain law, 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 157 

having obtained a foothold in the Roman 
poHcy, rapidly developed. Fifty years after 
the law of Gaius Gracchus it was necessary 
to limit the amount of grain which could be 
purchased by any one citizen to five modii 
(about one and a quarter bushels) per month ; 
at this period forty thousand citizens were 
regular piu-chasers of grain from the state. 
At a little later period it was provided that 
five modii per month should be given without 
charge to such citizens as might require it. 
At one time the nxmiber of Roman citizens 
receiving this free allowance of grain rose to 
three hundred and twenty thousand. The Em- 
peror Augustus fixed the maximum number 
to whom such allowance should be given at 
two hundred thousand. 

The permanent and continuing effect of 
these grain laws was to further demorahze 
free labor in Italy and the character of the 
Roman citizen, and to bring about a con- 
stantly increasing use of slave labor in agri- 
culture and of mercenaries in war. 

One of the minor laws introduced by Gaius 
Gracchus was that which fixed the mini- 
mum age for military service at seventeen, 
and provided that the uniform and arms of 



iS8 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

the soldiers should be furnished by the state. 

A more important law, and one whose 
object was both to better economic conditions 
and to strike at the power of the Senate, was 
a law calling for large expenditures for the 
purpose of improving the roads through 
Italy and building new roads, and which gave 
the complete management of such work to 
the tribunes. Previously, the control of all 
public works and improvements had been 
in the hands of the censors, subject to the 
supervision of the Senate. 

It was to the carrying out of this last- 
mentioned law that Gains devoted his greatest 
energies during the year of his first tribune- 
ship. The improvement of the commercial 
roads throughout Italy was a work which all 
classes in the community must approve; 
and even the enemies of Gracchus could 
but praise the executive ability and the 
untiring energy with which he supervised 
the carrying out of the work. 

The great system of internal improvements 
undertaken this year, however, attracted 
to Rome a great multitude of people from 
all parts of Italy, and tended to accentuate 
the bad feeling on the part of the mass 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 159 

of the Roman citizens toward the ItaHans. 

Gaius Gracchus was, for the time, the 
complete master of the poHtical situation. 
In the consular election of 123 B.C. he was 
able to secure the election of C. Fannius, 
an old friend and supporter of his brother, 
and the defeat of L. Opimius, the candidate 
of the senatorial party. The position of 
tribune had now become of such dignity and 
importance that Fulvius Flaccus, although 
he had already held the office of consul, pre- 
sented himself as a candidate for this office 
in the election of this year. 

Gracchus did not present himself as a 
candidate for reelection on accoimt of the 
law, or custom, against reelection to this 
office. However, he was reelected tribune 
this year, although the manner in which his 
reelection was brought about is not very 
clear to us. The Roman historians say that 
as a sufficient number of candidates did not 
present themselves to fill all the positions of 
tribunes, the comitia tributa reelected Grac- 
chus under the law which gave them the right 
to reelect a tribune under such conditions. 

This is the only occasion upon which we 
hear anything of this law, and we have no 



i6o THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

knowledge as to when it was passed, or as 
to what were its exact provisions. Some 
writers, of that school of historians hostile 
to the work of Tiberius Gracchus, hint that 
a law authorizing the reelection of tribunes, 
under the peculiar circumstances above 
mentioned, must have been enacted since 
the death of Tiberius Gracchus. The theory 
of these writers involves the assumption of 
the enactment of a law prohibiting the 
reelection of tribunes, and then of another 
law limiting the application of the first law, 
although we have no evidence as to the 
passage of either of such laws, and no evidence 
of their existence, except during the conflicts 
of the Gracchi. 

Upon his reelection Gaius Gracchus, prob- 
ably largely through the influence of Flaccus, 
introduced a bill to extend the franchise to 
all the Latin colonies and probably to all 
the citizens of the Italian communities. 
The measure was that of a patriot and a 
statesman, but it proved the undoing of its 
author. The measure failed to pass, and 
its introduction destroyed a great part of the 
influence and popularity of Gaius Gracchus. 

Trouble and unpopularity next came to 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES i6i 

Gaius Gracchus from the colonies which 
were to be founded during this year. Grac- 
chus entered upon this work in a conserva- 
tive manner, starting out with only a few 
colonies, at the outset sending only a few citi- 
zens to each colony and admitting no citizen 
to any of the colonies unless he was of a 
respectable character. 

The Senate, seeing the power of Gaius 
Gracchus tottering, resolved to destroy him 
politically by taking away his influence 
with the people. To accomplish this purpose 
Marcus Livius Drusus, who also held the 
office of tribune but who was a man of great 
wealth and affiliated with the senatorial 
party, was put forward to outbid Gracchus 
for the popular approval. In pursuance 
of this plan Drusus introduced a law for the 
immediate settlement of twelve colonies, 
each colony to consist of three thousand 
families, chosen without regard to their 
character, and each colonist to hold his 
land rent free. The passage of this Livian 
Law, as it was called, marked the close of 
the control of Gaius Gracchus over the 
comitia tributa. In the elections of 122 B.C. 
L. Opimius, the enemy of Gracchus, was 
II 



i62 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

elected consul, and neither Gracchus nor 
Flaccus was reelected tribune. 

The opponents of Gracchus, however, were 
not content with having driven him from 
political power, but were resolved upon 
depriving him of life as well. An excuse for 
an attack upon Gains Gracchus was found 
in a report from Carthage that the colony 
founded there by Gracchus had been situated 
upon ground which had been cursed by Scipio 
at the time of the destruction of Carthage. 
Acting upon this report, the Senate directed 
the tribunes to call a meeting of the comitia 
tributa for the purpose of revoking the law 
relative to the colony at Carthage. 

Upon the day of the meeting of the tribes 
one of the followers of the consul Opimius, 
who had taken occasion to insult Gains 
Gracchus, was stabbed by some unknown 
person. The senatorial party now had the 
opportunity to secure their prey, and imme- 
diately proceeded to accomplish their pur- 
pose. The meeting of the comitia tributa 
was broken up, and a meeting of the Senate 
called, at which Gracchus was declared a pub- 
lic enemy and the consuls directed to take 
steps to secure the safety of the republic. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 163 

It is outside the purpose of this work to go 
into the details of the butchery of the next 
day in which Gaius Gracchus, Fulvius Flaccus, 
and three thousand of their supporters lost 
their lives. The charge that Gaius Gracchus 
had planned to do what Julius Caesar was to 
do in the next century, make himself dictator, 
or emperor, of Rome, is best disproved by 
the absolute lack of any military prepara- 
tions on the part of Gracchus, even to the 
extent of securing his own safety when he 
knew his life was in constant danger. 

Although the friends of Gracchus and Flac- 
cus had gathered together to protect their 
leaders, they were without either proper 
arms or any system of military organization, 
and were cut down, almost without resist- 
ance, by the armed forces which had been 
collected by the consul, Opimius. Mention 
might be made of the fruitless heroism dis- 
played by some of those friends of Gaius 
Gracchus who remained true to him to the 
last; but the flashes of brightness were few, 
and the day must ever be recorded as one of 
the darkest in all Roman history. 

It was this day that marked the final 
failure of the last movement which might 



i64 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

have saved and rejuvenated the great Roman 
repubhc; it was this day that showed the 
right of manhood was no longer the highest 
right in Rome, and that the rule of special 
and vested interests was now supreme. 

The singleness of purpose and openness of 
character in Tiberius Gracchus leave no 
opening for speculation or doubt as to the 
motives from which he acted or the objects 
which he sought. Both the character and 
the actions of Gains Gracchus are more com- 
plex than those of his brother, and many 
historians have doubted the disinterestedness 
of his agitation for popular rights. The 
final summaries upon the character of this 
man, of two recent historians, are as follows: 

"The man who originates is always so far greater 
than the man who imitates, and Caius only followed 
where his brother led. The very dream which Caius 
told to the people shows that his brother's spell was 
still on him, and his telling it, together with his impet- 
uous oratory and his avowed fatalism, militates against 
the theory that Tiberius was swayed by impulse and 
sentiment, and he by calculation and reason. But 
no doubt he profited by experience of the past. 
He had learned how to bide his time, and to think 
generosity wasted on the murderous crew whom he had 
sworn to punish. Pure in life, perfectly prepared for 
a death to which he considered himself foredoomed, 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 165 

glowing with one fervent passion, he took up his 
brother's cause with a double portion of his brother's 
spirit, because he had thought more before action, 
because he had greater natural eloquence, and because 
being forewarned he was forearmed. 

"In spite of the labours of recent historians, the 
legislation of Caius Gracchus is still hard to under- 
stand. Where the original authorities contradict each 
other, as they often do, probable conjecture is the 
most which can be attained, and no attempt will be 
made here to specify what were the measures of the 
first tribunate of Caius, and what of the second. The 
general scope and tendency of his legislation is clear 
enough. It was to overthrow the senatorial govern- 
ment, and in the new government to give the chief 
share of the executive power to the mercantile class, 
and the chief share of the legislative power to Italians. 
These were his immediate aims. Probably he meant 
to keep all the strings he thus set in motion in his own 
hands, so as to be practically monarch of Rome. But 
whether he definitely conceived the idea of monarchy, 
and, looking beyond his own requirements, pictured 
to himself a successor at some future time inheriting 
the authority which he had established, no one can 
say." (Beesly.) 

"It is clear that he did not wish to place the Roman 
Republic on a new democratic basis, but that he 
wished to abolish it, and introduce in its stead an 
absolute despotism, in the form of an imlimited trib- 
uneship for life. Nor can he be blamed for it; as, 
though an absolute monarchy is a great misfortune for a 



i66 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

nation, it is a less misfortune than an absolute oligarchy. 
Besides this, he was fired with the passion for a speedy 
vengeance, and was in fact a political incendiary — the 
author not only of the one hundred years' revolution, 
which dates from him, but the founder of that terrible 
urban proletariat which, utterly demoralized by com 
largesses and the flattery of the classes above it, and 
at the same time conscious of its power, lay like an 
incubus for five hundred years on the Roman common- 
wealth, and only perished with it. 

"Many of the fundamental maxims of Roman 
monarchy may be traced to Gracchus. He first 
laid down that all the land of subject communities was 
to be regarded as the private property of the state — 
a maxim first applied to vindicate the right of the 
state to tax the land and then to send out colonies to 
it, which later became a fundamental principle of law 
under the empire. He invented the tactics by which 
his successors broke down the governing aristocracy, 
and substituted strict and judicious administration 
for the previous misgovemment. He first opened the 
way to a reconciliation between Rome and the prov- 
inces, and his attempt to rebuild Carthage and to 
give an opportunity for Italian emigration to the 
provinces was the first link in the chain] of that 
beneficial course of action. Right and wrong, for- 
tune and misfortune, were so inextricably blended 
in this singular man and in this marvelous political 
constellation, that it may well beseem history in this 
case — though it beseems her but seldom — to reserve 
her judgment." (Mommsen.) 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 167 

Much of the criticism of each of these 
historians is manifestly true; but the charge 
that Gaius Gracchus contemplated the sub- 
stitution of the rule of a despot for the rule 
of the oligarchy seems not to be borne out 
by the facts. 

A true understanding of the policies and 
objects of Gaius Gracchus can be had only 
when we start our investigation with an 
appreciation of the strongest motive which 
urged him onward. This motive was not, 
on the one hand, a deep-rooted love and 
reverence for popular rights (as was undoubt- 
edly the case with his brother Tiberius); 
nor, on the other hand, was it selfish interest, 
or the desire to usurp to himself the supreme 
power in the state. The strongest influence 
in the life and character of Gaius Gracchus 
was the desire to be avenged upon the sena- 
torial party for the murder of his brother. 
His efforts in behalf of popular rights were 
instigated primarily by the desire to show 
respect to his brother's memory and to 
carry out his brother's policies. Upon this 
hypothesis the life and character of Gaius 
Gracchus can be easily understood. 



CHAPTER VIII 
Marius and Sulla 

'T^HE Roman government after the death 
of Gains Gracchus, while still nomi- 
nally a republic, had lost all its democratic 
character and had once more become an 
oligarchy such as had existed centuries before, 
during the period of the patrician republic. 
It was evident, however, that the existing 
situation could not permanently continue. 
The oligarchical government is that form of 
government which from its very nature can 
never acquire stability. Both democracy and 
monarchy possess elements of strength which 
may give to such governments a long contin- 
uance of life; the oligarchy, lacking both the 
strength of foundation of the one and the 
unity of action of the other, must inevitably 
be supplanted by a freer or a more restricted 
system of government. After the fall of 
Gains Gracchus the last opportunity for the 
re-creation in Rome of a truly democratic 
form of government was lost. It should 
have been evident to any one who could 
read the signs of the future that the power 

i68 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 169 

for the time possessed by the senatorial oli- 
garchy would soon be snatched from it, either 
by the frenzied hand of a mob or by the 
strong hand of a despot. 

Few in Rome at this time, however, seem 
to have been thinking much about the future. 
To reactionists or even to conservatives the 
future is always almost an unknown word; 
satisfied with the present, or looking back 
with regret to the past, the supporters of 
special interests and the votaries of tradition 
walk backward over the precipice, the near 
presence of which they will neither see for 
themselves nor be warned of by others. 

A flicker of life on the part of the popular 
party was seen in an effort by the tribune 
Decius to indict the former consul Opimius 
for his part in the murder of Gaius Gracchus 
and his friends. The defense of Opimius 
was undertaken by the renegade Carbo. 
The life of this politician seems an excellent 
example in proof of the statement that the 
demagogue seeks the favor of the people only 
for his own advantage, and that as soon as 
he has acquired such favor, and has become 
a person of influence, his next step is to sell 
himself, now valuable on account of the 



I70 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

political power he has acquired through his 
hypocrisy toward the people, to the special 
interests. No better contrast can be found 
in history between the true reformer and the 
unprincipled demagogue than is the con- 
trast between Tiberius Gracchus and Carbo. 
While it is comparatively easy, however, to 
go back into past ages and to separate the 
sheep from the goats, and to distinguish 
between reformer and hypocrite, it is a much 
harder undertaking to do this with the living 
politicians. It often happens that the people 
are too ready to follow the demagogue and 
to repudiate and ridicule the honest reformer. 
Striking illustrations of this phenomenon 
could easily be given from recent American 
history. The doctrine of the survival of 
the fittest applies in all sciences, social as well 
as natural. In all its applications, however, 
this doctrine is that of the survival of the 
fittest to meet existing conditions, not the 
survival of the fittest from the standpoint 
of absolute merit. With those who attempt 
to secure the political support of the pro- 
letariat of a great city, merit is to a great 
extent a handicap, and a certain class of 
vices the greatest advantage. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 171 

There are some men naturally so consti- 
tuted that the doctrine that the end justifies 
the means can be consistently and safely 
applied by them in their pubHc life. To 
this class have belonged most of those men 
through whom all the greatest victories for 
liberty and the greatest reforms in this world 
have been finally achieved. The mass of 
mankind, however, are incapable of consist- 
ently and permanently following the doc- 
trine; and with all men, except the few above 
referred to, the character of their objects 
and methods must act and react upon each 
other. The result is that those seeking 
reform and honesty in politics, in the main 
seek to accompHsh their purposes by honest 
methods; while the demagogue, seeking his 
own interests alone, a hypocrite as to his 
motives, will never consider as to the honesty 
of his methods. It is only on exceptional 
occasions that the honest advocate of pop- 
ular rights can win the support of the mob 
by honest methods. Several causes work 
together to accompHsh this result. In the 
lower economic strata the individual is far 
more strongly influenced by his own im- 
mediate interests than by the permanent 



172 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

interests of the class to which he belongs. 
Perhaps it would be too much to expect 
the contrary. 

We have constantly before us to-day the 
spectacle of men who — loudest in their 
denunciation of the discrimination which 
public officials exercise in favor of the special 
classes and against the common citizen — 
at election time, in consideration of a few 
dollars for themselves, exert all their influence 
in favor of the worst exponents of the system 
they denounce. By the return, in the form 
of direct or indirect bribes to a selected few 
of the proletariat, of a small portion of the 
money previously illegally or unjustly ex- 
ploited from the poor, the politicians of the 
"practical" type are able to secure the assent 
of the greater portion of the proletariat to 
the continuation of such exploitation. 

Again, the candidate or political leader who 
intends to carry out his promises is under 
a disadvantage in comparison with the can- 
didate or leader who does not. There are 
limitations to what government can accom- 
plish; there are no limitations to what a 
demagogue can promise. There is no more 
unfavorable criticism possible upon the lack 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 173 

of proper intelligence of the majority of the 
American voters than the character of the 
promises and the arguments which are re- 
ceived with applause at political meetings 
of every political party. 

This criticism upon the political actions 
of the poorer classes, economically, by no 
means indicates that they are the least 
desirable class of voters in a country, or 
that a country would be better governed if 
the ballot were taken away from them. 
The truth of the matter is that it is mainly 
by the votes and efforts of the lowest classes 
in a community (from the standpoint of 
wealth and social status) that every great 
reform or popular victory must be achieved. 
It is at the great crises that the masses are 
most generally right, and the classes most 
generally wrong. No phenomenon of history 
is more clear and more striking than that, 
at every great crisis of the world's history, 
the mass of the wealthy and educated classes 
has been always wrong. Nowhere is this 
more plainly to be discerned than in the 
history of our own country. In the Revolu- 
tionary days the great mass of the wealth 
and education in the country was to be found 



174 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

on the Tory side. At the crisis the concrete 
question of personal interest prevails over 
the abstract idea of public welfare; those 
who are personally satisfied with existing 
conditions are slow to advocate a change; 
those who have little to lose find it easier to 
be courageous. Next to the small nucleus of 
true reformers, the first adherents of any 
reform movement are apt to be the discon- 
tented and restless elements of the community. 

We can see a working example of this 
phenomenon, many centuries ago, in the 
brief account which the Bible gives us of the 
recruiting of the force with which David 
first offered resistance to King Saul. " David 
therefore departed thence, and escaped to 
the Cave AduUam: and when his brethren 
and all his father's house heard it, they 
went down thither to him. And every one 
that was in distress, and every one that 
was in debt, and every one that was dis- 
contented, gathered themselves unto him; 
and he became a captain over them." 

In the case of the demagogue Carbo, we 
find him, after a violent career as a popu- 
lar tribune, selling his influence and services 
to the senatorial party, of which he was 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 175 

henceforth the most servient tool. He was 
rewarded for his services to this party by 
an election as consul, and it was during his 
consulship (120 B.C.) that the indictment 
was brought against Opimius. Carbo's influ- 
ence, coupled with the fear which the mur- 
derers of the Gracchi and their followers had 
left in the minds of the people, was sufficient 
to secure the acquittal of Opimius. The tri- 
umph of Carbo, however, was short-lived. 
He was himself indicted by L. Licinius 
Crassus, brother-in-law of Gaius Gracchus, 
and the manifestation of the feeling against 
him became so bitter that Garbo was driven 
to take his own life by poison. 

The Roman politicians of the next few 
years, the Metelli, ^milius Scaurus, and 
others, left little impress upon the course of 
Roman history, and their lives and triumphs 
are of little interest to us. Their aims were 
of a strictly personal character, their civic 
work was of a routine character; if they 
did little harm to the state, they conferred 
no benefit upon it. 

The most important event of the closing 
years of the second century before Christ was 
the famous, or rather infamous, Jugurthine 



176 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

War. The story of this war furnishes the 
final evidence as to the corruption and de- 
gradation of Roman politics and officials at 
this time. This war arose out of a disputed 
succession to the throne of Numidia. Jugur- 
tha, at first the friend and ally of Rome, 
after he had secured possession of the whole 
country through the murder of his two rivals, 
his cousins, found himself at last at war 
with Rome. The fortune of war going against 
him, he secured an advantageous peace by 
bribing the Roman general. The facts rela- 
tive to this peace becoming known at Rome, 
Jugurtha was stimmoned to appear at 
Rome to give his account of the proceedings. 
His history, during this famous visit to 
Rome, is thus related by the Roman his- 
torian Sallust: 

"During the course of these proceedings at Rome, 
those whom Bestia had left in Numidia in command 
of the army, following the example of their general, 
had been guilty of many scandalous transactions. 
Some, seduced by gold, had restored Jugurtha his 
elephants; others had sold him his deserters; others 
had ravaged the lands of those at peace with us; so 
strong a spirit of rapacity, like the contagion of a 
pestilence, had pervaded the breasts of all. 

"Cassius, when the measure proposed by Memmius 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 177 

had been carried, and whilst all the nobility were in 
consternation, set out on his mission to Jugurtha, 
whom, alarmed as he was, and despairing of his for- 
tune, from a sense of guilt, he admonished ' that, since 
he had surrendered himself to the Romans, he had 
better make trial of their mercy than their power.' 
He also pledged his own word, which Jugurtha valued 
not less than that of the public, for his safety. Such, 
at that period, was the reputation of Cassius. 

"Jugurtha, accordingly, accompanied Cassius to 
Rome, but without any mark of royalty, and in the 
garb, as much as possible, of a suppliant; and, though 
he felt great confidence on his own part, and was 
supported by all those through whose power or villainy 
he had accomplished his projects, he purchased, by a 
vast bribe, the aid of Caius Beebius, a tribune of the 
people, by whose audacity he hoped to be protected 
against the law, and against all harm. 

"An assembly of the people being convoked, 
Memmius, although they were violently exasperated 
against Jugurtha (some demanding that he shoiild be 
cast into prison, others that, unless he should name 
his accomplices in guilt, he should be put to death, 
according to the usage of their ancestors, as a public 
enemy) yet, regarding rather their character than their 
resentment, endeavoured to calm their turbulence and 
mitigate their rage; and assured them that, as far as 
depended on him, the public faith should not be broken. 
At length, when silence was obtained, he brought for- 
ward Jugurtha, and addressed them. He detailed 
the misdeeds of Jugurtha at Rome and in Numidia, 

12 



178 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

and set forth his crimes towards his father and brothers; 
and admonished the prince 'that the Roman people, 
though they were well aware by whose support and 
agency he had acted, yet desired further testimony 
from himself; that, if he disclosed the truth, there was 
great hope for him in the honour and clemency of 
the Romans; but if he concealed it, he would certainly 
not save his accomplices, but ruin himself and his 
hopes forever.' 

"But when Memmius had concluded his speech, 
and Jugurtha was expected to give his answer, Caius 
Bgebius, the tribune of the people, whom I have just 
noticed as having been bribed, enjoined the prince to 
hold his peace; and though the multitude who formed 
the assembly were desperately enraged, and endeav- 
oured to terrify the tribune by outcries, by angry 
looks, by violent gestures, and by every other act to 
which anger prompts, his audacity was at last tri- 
umphant. The people, mocked and set at naught, 
withdrew from the place of assembly, and the con- 
fidence of Jugurtha, Bestia, and the others whom this 
investigation had alarmed, was greatly augmented. 

"There was at this period in Rome, a certain 
Numidian named Massiva, a son of Gulussa and 
grandson of Masinissa, who, from having been, in the 
dissensions among princes, opposed to Jugurtha, had 
been obliged, after the surrender of Cirta and the 
murder of Adherbal, to make his escape out of Africa. 
Spurius Albinus, who was consul with Quintus Minucius 
Rufus the year after Bestia, prevailed upon this man, 
as he was of the family of Masinissa, and as odium and 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 179 

terror hung over Jugurtha for his crimes, to petition 
the senate for the kingdom of Numidia. Albinus, 
being eager for the conduct of a war, was desirous that 
affairs should be disturbed, rather than sink into 
tranquillity; especially as, in the division of the 
provinces, Numidia had fallen to himself, and Mace- 
donia to Minucius, 

"When Massiva proceeded to carry these sug- 
gestions into execution, Jugurtha, finding that he had 
no sufficient support in his friends, as a sense of guilt 
deterred some and evil report or timidity, others from 
coming forward in his behalf, directed Bomilcar, 
his most attached and faithful adherent, to procure by 
the aid of money, by which he had already effected 
so much, assassins to kill Massiva; and to do it secretly 
if he could, but if secrecy should be impossible, to cut 
him off in any way whatsoever. This commission 
Bomilcar soon found means to execute; and, by the 
agency of men versed in such service, ascertained the 
direction of his journeys, his hours of leaving home, 
and the times at which he resorted to particular places, 
and, when all was ready, placed his assassins in ambush. 
One of their number sprang upon Massiva, though with 
too little caution, and killed him; but, being himself 
caught, he made at the instigation of many, and 
especially of Albinus the consul, a full confession, 
Bomilcar was accordingly committed for trial, though 
rather on the principles of reason and justice than in 
accordance with the law of nations, as he was in the 
retinue of one who had come to Rome on a pledge of 
the public faith for his safety. But Jugurtha, though 



i8o THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

! • V, 

clearly guilty of the crime, did not cease to struggle 
against the truth, until he perceived that the infamy 
of the deed was too strong for his interest or his money. 
For that reason, although at the commencement 
of the proceedings, he had given fifty of his friends as 
bail for Bomilcar, yet thinking more of his kingdom 
than of the sureties, he sent him o& privately into 
Numidia, for he feared that if such a man should be 
executed, his other subjects would be deterred from 
obeying him. A few days after, he himself departed, 
having been ordered by the senate to quit Italy. But, 
as he was going from Rome, he is said, after frequently 
looking back on it in silence, to have at last exclaimed 
that ' it was a venal city, and would soon perish, if 
it coiild but find a purchaser.' " 

Upon the resumption of the war with Ju- 
gurtha the Romans at first met with a great 
disaster, the army under Spurius Albinus 
being defeated and compelled to pass under 
the yoke and withdraw from Numidia. The 
result of this defeat was a sweeping investi- 
gation of the wholesale bribery of Roman 
officials by Jugurtha. Many, though not all, 
of those guilty in this respect were punished 
by banishment. The conduct of the war was 
now delegated to Q. Caecilius Metellus, by 
whom it was soon after brought to a suc- 
cessful termination. This result, however, was 
due less to the military genius of Metellus 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES i8i 

than to that of his Heutenant Gaius Marius, 
who immediately afterwards became the cen- 
tral figure in the political arena at Rome. 

Marius was born near Arpintim about 
157 B.C. of peasant parents. Abandoning 
agriculture for the army, at a very early age 
he had won distinction not only for personal 
strength and courage but also for military 
ability. As early as the year 132 B.C. Scipio 
Africanus, once being asked by a flatterer 
where a general could be found to fill his 
place, touched the arm of Marius, who hap- 
pened to be present on the occasion, and 
answered, "Perhaps here." It was not only 
in the field of war but also in that of politics 
that Marius had won a reputation before 
the time that he served under Metellus 
against Jugurtha. Being elected tribune in 
119 B.C., his actions, upon some unimportant 
controversies which arose during the year, 
had been such as to show the determination 
and ferocity of his disposition, and to win 
the favor of the populace and the distrust of 
the senatorial party. Through the influence 
of the aristocracy Marius was defeated for 
both the aedileships, but was finally elected 
praetor in 115 B.C. 



i82 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

It was while he was serving under Metellus 
in Africa that Marius became a candidate 
for the consulship. The idea of Marius as 
consul was very distasteful to Metellus, who 
permitted Marius to leave the camp for 
Rome only twelve days before the day set 
for the election. Marius, by almost super- 
human exertions, succeeded in making the 
journey to Rome in the first six of these 
days, and in the remaining six conducted a 
successful campaign for the consulship. 

The election of Marius to the consulship 
marks the beginning of the last age of the 
Roman republic. With Marius began the 
habitual rule of might rather than of right; 
rule by armies, instead of rule by majori- 
ties. For something over half a century 
power at Rome was to be shuffled backward 
and forward between different military com- 
manders, until finally a military despot 
arose strong enough both to overthrow the 
oligarchy and to put down the mob. The 
manner in which the Romans had abstained 
from internal violence for centuries, during 
all the heat of so many bitter political and 
class contests, is one of the wonders of 
ancient history. The aristocracy first broke 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 183 

this rule by resorting to force to block the 
reforms of the Gracchi. Such a procedure 
must always be a two-edged weapon, and 
Marius was the man fated to turn the sword 
against those who first drew it in Roman 
politics. The very election of Marius as 
consiil (107 B.C.) was the occasion of much 
disquietude to the oligarchy. 

Although the consulship had at this time, 
in theory, been for two hundred sixty years 
open to all Roman citizens, nevertheless, in 
practice, it had, with occasional exceptions, 
been confined to the members of the few 
great families. In fact, so general had this 
become that a man who was the first of his 
family to be elected to this office was known 
as a "new man." Not only was Marius a 
*'new man," but his immediate ancestors, in 
all probability, were men lower in the social 
and economic scale than had been the father 
and grandfather of any previous Roman 
consiil. If the rise of Marius was a source of 
danger to the senatorial party, the qualities 
which had rendered his success possible were 
a source of danger to the whole community. 
Marius was and had been a soldier, and a 
soldier only. There is nothing in his whole life 



1 84 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

to indicate that he combined with the attri- 
butes of the general any of those of the 
statesman, as did Csesar and Napoleon. The 
same fighting qualities which brought to him 
success in war likewise produced success in 
politics, and the same ferocity of disposition 
was manifested in both fields. 

The military ability of Marius, in connec- 
tion with the peculiar circumstances of the 
times, soon secured to this general a more 
absolute control of the Roman community 
than had previously been possessed by any 
consul of Rome. The military ability of 
Marius has never been disputed either by his 
contemporaries or by later historians. His 
military successes after his election to the 
consulship were rapid and decisive. Where 
his predecessors had failed, Marius succeeded 
in the Jugurthine War, and the year 104 B.C. 
witnessed at Rome the triumph of Marius, 
with the craftiest, ablest, and most unscrup- 
ulous of African kings walking in chains as 
a captive in his train. 

Of greater importance and benefit to Rome 
were the great victories won by Marius over 
those terrible invaders, the Teutones and the 
Cimbrians, who had been threatening Rome 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 185 

and harassing northern Italy for a nimiber of 
years. In 102 B.C. the Teutones were de- 
feated by Marius at the battle of Aquae Sex- 
tiae, where the number of the vanquished who 
were killed is variously estimated at from 
one hundred twenty thousand to two hundred 
thousand. The following year, during the 
fifth consulship of Marius, the Cimbrians 
were practically annihilated, sixty thousand 
being captured and sold as slaves and the 
remainder of the vast host, with few excep- 
tions, killed. 

The second century before Christ thus 
closed with brilliant foreign victories for the 
Roman arms. This close likewise saw the 
beginning of another period of slave insurrec- 
tions and civil war. As before, the principal 
resistance by the slaves occurred in the 
island of Sicily. The immediate cause of 
this insurrection was the neglect or refusal 
of the Roman praetor in Sicily to obey a 
decree of the Senate. So great a scandal 
had arisen from the continued actions of the 
Roman tax collectors in the East in seizing 
and selling into slavery persons who failed to 
pay the exorbitant taxes demanded from them 
that the Senate passed a decree providing 



i86 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

that all persons illegally held as slaves should 
be immediately released. This decree would 
have affected so many slaves in the island of 
Sicily that the praetor suspended its operation. 
The slaves, rendered desperate by seeing this 
promised liberty snatched from them, once 
more rose in rebellion. 

Again the slaves were commanded by able 
leaders, and again they won a number of 
victories over Roman armies before they 
were finally put down. 

"The revolt was thus apparently suppressed, yet 
many years the disturbances continued, and there, 
were innumerable local insurrections, causing great 
carnage and unspeakable misery. A Roman knight, 
Titus Minucius, harassed by debt, and annoyed by 
the importunities of his creditors, through revenge 
incited an insurrection, and placed himself at the head 
of three thousand slaves. A bloody battle ensued 
before he was put down. Soon after this, two very 
able slaves, Sabrius and Athenio, headed revolts. 
Their forces were marshaled in well-disciplined bands, 
and for some time they successfully repelled all the 
power Rome could bring against them. Several 
Roman armies were defeated with great loss, and the 
whole island was surrendered to blood and violence. 
The poorer class of the free inhabitants availed them- 
selves of the general confusion to indulge in unrestrained 
license and devastation. This insurrection became so 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 187 

formidable, that again Rome was compelled to rouse 
her energies. A consular army was sent, which drove 
the insurgents into their strongholds and then subdued 
them by the slow process of siege. The carnage and 
misery resulting from these servile wars no tongue can 
tell. The whole power of the Roman empire was 
pledged to put down insurrections; and though the 
captives could avenge their wrongs and sell their lives 
dearly, it was in vain for them to hope for ultimate 
success. 

"A law was passed prohibiting any slave from 
carrying a warlike weapon. Rigorously was this law 
enforced. At one time a boar of remarkable size was 
sent as a present to L. Domicius, then praetor of the 
island. He inquired who had killed it. On being 
informed that it was a slave, who was employed as a 
shepherd, he summoned the man before him, and 
asked how he had contrived to kill so powerful an 
animal. The shepherd repHed that he had killed it 
with a boar spear. The merciless Domicius ordered 
him immediately to be crucified for having used a 
weapon in violation of the law. This rigor was pursued 
so unrelentingly, that, for a long period, there were no 
more revolts ! ' ' (Abbott's History of Italy.) 

The victories of Marius over the Teutones 
and Cimbrians had been followed by his 
sixth election to the consulship. This elec- 
tion, however, had not been secured without 
great difficulty and tumult. The aristocratic 
party had been consistently the opponents 



i88 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

and enemies of Marius throughout his whole 
career. The great victories which he had 
won for Rome, instead of reconciling this 
class to him, had made them only the more 
jealous and fearful of him. 

By this time Marius had in addition, to 
a great extent, alienated the lower classes of 
the Roman citizens. The enmity between 
the proletariat at Rome and the Italians, 
which had commenced at the time of the 
younger Gracchus, had been constantly in- 
creasing. Marius had inclined more and more 
toward the side of the Italians. Like most 
generals, his thoughts and affections were for 
his soldiers rather than for the state which he 
served; and the soldiers over whom Marius 
had command and with whom he had won 
his great victories were mainly Italians. 
The degenerate city mob at Rome no longer 
desired or was fit for military life, and 
the safety of Rome and the extension of 
her territories now rested mainly upon those 
to whom the rights of her citizenship were 
denied. 

The Italians, probably appreciating both 
the strength of their position and the injus- 
tice of their treatment, were demanding the 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 189 

rights of Roman citizenship, and in this 
demand they found a sympathizer in the 
consul Marius. Immediately after his vic- 
tories in the north of Italy, Marius, in direct 
violation of the law, had granted Roman 
citizenship to one thousand soldiers in his 
army who had distinguished themselves in the 
campaign. His excuse was characteristic of 
the existing conditions and prophetic of the 
course of Roman history during the succeed- 
ing century: "Amid the din of arms, I 
could not hear the voice of the laws." 

During his sixth consulship Marius en- 
deavored to secure the Roman franchise for 
certain of his soldiers in a more regular 
manner. The tribunes, Apuleius Saturninus 
and Servilius Glaucia, secured the passage of 
a law by which Marius was authorized to 
grant the rights of Roman citizenship to three 
persons in every colony which enjoyed the 
Latin franchise. 

The career of the tribune Saturninus is 
illustrative of the condition of anarchy into 
which Rome was rapidly drifting. Satur- 
ninus was the first of the Roman politicians to 
rely as a regular practice upon "strong-arm 
methods" to carry elections. In his first 



iQO THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

race for the tribuneship he had brazenly 
murdered one of the opposing candidates; 
he had been the principal campaign manager 
for Marius at the time of his sixth election 
to the consulship, when the disbanded army 
of Marius had been distributed among the 
Roman citizens in the meetings of the comitia 
tributa in such numbers as to overawe all 
opposition. Finally, when C. Memmius, a 
bitter political enemy of his, seemed about to 
be elected to the consulship, he caused him 
to be stabbed in the Forum by one of the 
thugs who constituted his own bodyguard. 
Saturninus, however, had now reached the 
point where he stood almost alone. The 
senatorial party were his natural enemies; 
the Roman mob had, in the main, fallen away 
from his support on account of his friendly 
feeling toward the Italians, and his extreme 
methods had compelled even Marius to 
withdraw his support. 

Seeing his political power almost gone, 
Saturninus, in company with his fellow- 
tribune Glaucia and a band of the ruffians 
with which Rome was so badly infested at 
this time, seized the citadel on the capitol 
and attempted to raise an insurrection 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 191 

against the republic. The citadel was con- 
sidered to be impregnable to an attack, but 
Saturninus and his followers were soon forced 
into submission by the cutting off of their 
water supply. The insurgents had sur- 
rendered upon the condition that their lives 
should be spared. Marius, in order to pro- 
tect their safety, imprisoned them in a large 
building, known as the Curia Hostilia. The 
mob, however, climbed to the top of the 
building, tore off the roof, and murdered all 
the prisoners by dropping rocks upon them. 
For centiu'ies one of the most striking 
characteristics of Roman political life had 
been the forbearance with which all political 
factions restrained themselves from the use 
of violence. Such a condition of affairs, 
however, no longer existed, and from the 
beginning of the first century before Christ 
the use of force in political controversies at 
Rome became the rule rather than the 
exception. The exact reasons for the sudden 
change of sentiment upon the part of the 
Roman mob against Saturninus is doubtful. 
It may have been solely on account of his 
advocacy of Italian suffrage, or it may have 
been due to the belief by the mob in the 



192 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

accusation made by the senators that Satur- 
ninus was seeking to make himself king. 

The political history of Rome during the 
first quarter of the first century before Christ 
was extremely complicated on account of 
the existence, side by side, of the two great 
contests, — the one between the aristocratic 
party and the popular party at Rome; the 
second, between the Romans and the Italians. 
Both contests were from this time on to be 
marked by the most extreme bitterness on 
both sides, and each soon became a military 
rather than a political contest. 

The complicated system of laws regulating 
the status of the citizens of the various 
Italian cities under the Roman republic has 
already been discussed in previous chapters. 
It is also to be noted that at an earlier date 
the political rights of a Roman citizen were of 
doubtful value and were often refused by 
Italian cities to which they were offered. 
This state of affairs no longer existed, and 
the time had come when all Italians desired 
and demanded the political rights of the 
Roman citizen. 

The death of Saturninus and the departure 
of Marius for the East, in 99 B.C., gave an 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 193 

opportunity for a new set of political leaders 
at Rome. The first of these politicians to 
rise into prominence was M. Livius Drusus. 
Drusus occupied the unique position among 
the Roman politicians of this period of 
having attempted to play the role of con- 
ciliator between the various conflicting fac- 
tions. Originally brought forward in political 
life by the senatorial party with the inten- 
tion that he should play the part formerly 
taken by his father at the time of the Grac- 
chian conflicts, and destroy the influence 
of the popular leaders by outbidding them 
in their efforts for popular support — he 
soon went beyond the objects of his spon- 
sors and endeavored to secure real reforms 
for the benefit of the people and of the state. 
Some historians would rank Drusus as the 
best and ablest of all the Roman politicians 
who lived during the latter part of the 
republic. It is difficult, however, either to 
form an acctirate opinion of the policies or 
merits of Drusus or to assign to him his 
proper niche in history. The accounts which 
we have of his political activities are con- 
flicting and fragmentary, and his work left 
few permanent results. The measure for 

13 



194 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

which he is best remembered was his proposed 
law to grant the franchise to the Latins and 
ItaHans. Together with the increase of the 
franchise Drusus sought to secure the allot- 
ment of land to the needy Roman citizens, 
and a reform in the method of administering 
justice and government in Rome. 

The franchise law of Drusus secured for 
him unbounded popularity throughout Italy 
and bitter opposition at Rome. This oppo- 
sition in his own city culminated in his 
assassination in 91 B.C. 

The murder of Drusus was the spark 
which produced the conflagration of the Social 
War. Losing hope of securing any justice 
from Rome voluntarily, ten of the Italian 
tribes, the Samnites, Trentanians, Hirpini, 
Lucanians, Apulians, Picentines, Vestini, 
Marrucini, Marsians, and Pasligni banded 
themselves together and declared war against 
Rome. The Romans seemed to have been 
completely taken by surprise. The Roman 
legates sent to the camp of the Italians were 
murdered, together with all the Roman citi- 
zens upon whom the insurgents could lay 
their hands, and a policy of extermina- 
tion was resolved upon. Rome was to be 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 195 

destroyed, and Italy was to be made into a 
great republic with Corfinium as its capital. 
The government of the new republic was 
modeled after that of Rome. Marsian and 
Mutilus were chosen consuls for the first 
year of the new Italian republic. 

The war at first went against the Romans 
and for a while it seemed as if the Italians 
might even succeed in their scheme for the 
overthrow and the destruction of Rome. 
Again the Romans were obliged to look to 
Gaius Marius for their safety. Marius, who 
shortly before this time had returned from 
the East and who had been suffered to hold 
only a subordinate command during the 
first year of the war, now being put in control 
of one of the Roman armies turned the tide 
of the Italian success by winning the first 
great victory achieved by the Romans during 
the war. The sympathy of Marius, however, 
was so strongly with the demands of the 
Italians, and his desires so great to bring the 
war to a close by conceding these demands, 
that he failed to follow up the success with 
his accustomed vigor, with the result that 
a younger general was enabled to rise into 
prominence. 



196 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Lucius Cornelius Sulla had already acquired 
considerable military reputation from the 
campaign which he had served in Africa 
under Marius, and was now in command of 
one of the Roman armies. Sulla, through- 
out his whole life, was a consistent adherent 
of the extreme oligarchical party. Nowhere 
in his life's history do we find the slightest 
degree of regard for popular rights, or any 
opposition to injustice which might rest on 
the lower classes. With no sympathy for 
the Italians or the cause which they repre- 
sented, and possessed with military ability 
almost equal to that of Marius, Sulla became 
the military hero of the Social War. Never- 
theless, it was soon evident that the Romans 
themselves would not be able to bring the 
war to a successful termination. Therefore, 
by the Julian Law, the Roman franchise was 
extended to those tribes and cities in posses- 
sion of the Latin rights, who, in return for 
the grant of the franchise to themselves, 
seemed to have willingly assisted in prevent- 
ing its acquisition by the others. With the 
aid of the Latins, Sulla was able to compel 
the subjugation of the Italians, of whom 
more than three hundred thousand are 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 197 

reported to have been killed in the short war. 

The conclusion of this war, however, 
brought not even a temporary peace. The 
Roman sky was overshadowed with clouds 
both of foreign invasion and internal dissen- 
sion. In the far East the great Mithridates, 
king of Pontus, had defeated the Romans, 
murdered in cold blood eighty thousand 
Roman citizens whom he had found in Asia 
Minor, and was preparing to invade Greece, 
which was only too ready to rise and aid in 
the overthrow of the hated and oppressive 
Roman rule. 

In the meantime the battle of the Italians, 
lost in the field, was being renewed at Rome 
by the Roman politicians of the popular 
party. Under the leadership of the tribune 
Sulpicius the popular party was induced to 
take up the advocacy of the claims of the 
Italians. 

The fear which had been produced in the 
minds of all Romans by the disquieting news 
from the East tended to make all classes 
willing to conciliate the Italians, from whom 
soldiers for foreign service must mainly be 
recruited. 

By the Lex Plautia-Popiria the very same 



198 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

privileges were extended to all the Italian 
allies of Rome that had been extended to a 
favored few by the Lex Julia. A few cities 
in Italy, however, mainly those of Grecian 
origin, declined to take advantage of this 
law, preferring to retain their local system 
of self-government rather than become citi- 
zens of Rome. 

From the standpoint of Roman supremacy 
the passage of the Lex Plautia-Popiria was 
the wisest action in the whole course of 
Roman history. The efforts of years imme- 
diately preceding the passage of this act 
had shown that the citizenship of Rome, 
as constituted prior to the year 90 B.C., 
was far too limited to be able to long 
remain as the base upon which the great 
pyramid of the Roman foreign possessions 
should rest. Nevertheless, by the additions 
made by the Lex Julia and the Lex Plautia- 
Popiria, it was rendered broad and strong 
enough to sustain the great weight and bulk 
of the Roman empire for several centuries. 

The Lex Plautia-Popiria, however, fell far 
short of giving to the Italians the full politi- 
cal influence to which their nimibers would 
entitle them. The nimiber of the new citizens 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 199 

enrolled by the censors under the provisions 
of this new act were divided into eight (or 
perhaps ten) new tribes, instead of being 
divided among all the existing thirty-five 
tribes as had been demanded by Sulpicius. 

The passage of these laws, however, while 
it terminated one of the great contests 
between the Romans and Italians, did noth- 
ing toward terminating that between the 
oligarchical and the popular parties. During 
the period of the Social War the oligarchical 
and the popular parties in Rome had been by 
one common danger united against the com- 
bined force of the Latins, but with the close 
of the war this union was brought to an end. 
The poptilar party at Rome was augmented 
by the masses of the Italians; while with 
the oligarchical party was associated the 
aristocracy and nobles of the various Italian 
cities. 

The contest at Rome soon flamed up again 
over the question as to whom the command 
against Mithridates should be given. Again 
the question was settled by force instead of 
by ballot, Sulla marching to Rome at the head 
of his army, and Marius, to whom the com- 
mand of the army had been given by the 



200 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

\ 

vote of the people, being obliged to flee for 
his life. Many stories are told about the 
hairbreadth escapes of Marius at this time. 
It is even related that, being captured in a 
marsh in Campania, he was taken before the 
magistrate at Minturnae and a sentence of 
death passed upon him; that a Gaul was 
sent to his cell with the command to cut off 
his head, but that the barbarian was so 
frightened by the look in the eyes of Marius, 
which seemed to flash fire in the darkness 
of the cell, and by the awful tones in which 
the old man called out, "Wretch, dare you 
slay Gaius Marius?" that the Gaul fled from 
the prison in dismay without executing his 
command, and that Marius was afterwards 
released and succeeded in reaching Africa. 
It is hardly possible, however, in view of the 
blood which flowed in Rome at the command 
of Sulla, both at this time and a few years 
later upon his return from the East, that 
Marius would have succeeded in escaping 
death if he had, in reality, been captured by 
his opponents at this time. 

The political situation in Rome was now 
in the condition where political supremacy 
depended upon force instead of upon the 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 201 

ballot; and the rule of the aristocratic party 
in Rome was destroyed by the departure of 
Sulla and his army for the East. 

The consuls for the year 87 B.C. were Octa- 
vius, who belonged to the aristocratic party, 
and Cornelius Cinna, the friend of Marius, 
who belonged to the popular party. The 
latter attempted to once more bring forward 
the law for dividing the new Italian citizens 
among all the tribes of Rome, and was 
deprived of his consulship and exiled by the 
oligarchy on this account. Civil war now 
again broke out in Rome, and the city soon 
found herself threatened from all sides. At 
one time no less than four distinct and inde- 
pendent rebellious Roman armies were march- 
ing against Rome, while the Samnites, always 
the most vindictive and irreconcilable enemies 
of Rome, again brought their forces in the 
field— nominally to aid the popular party, in 
reality with the hope of being able to finally 
strike a blow against the very existence of 
Rome. 

Marius, who had fled to Africa, returned to 
Italy and in connection with Cinna put 
himself once more at the head of the popular 
party. No mihtary leader of the aristocratic 



202 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

party, capable of successfully contending 
against the veteran leader of the popular 
party, remained in Italy, and once again the 
political wheel of fortune revolved in Rome, 
leaving the oligarchical party at the mercy 
of Marius. 

His recent experiences had embittered the 
old soldier, and aroused within him a desire 
for vengeance and for blood which he had 
never before exhibited in his long political 
and military life. In dramatic fashion he 
placed before the eyes of the Roman citizens 
the ungrateful treatment which he had re- 
ceived in return for the great services he 
had rendered his country. Clad in the ragged 
costume of an exile, he led his victorious army 
to Rome, and, saying with bitterness that 
"an exile must not enter the city," he waited 
outside the walls of Rome until the decree 
of exile against him was formally repealed. 
If Marius, however, was scrupulous in his 
observation of the form of the laws prior to 
his entrance into the city, all his regard for 
either the form or substance of the law seems 
to have been lost after such entrance. 

Marius and Cinna declared themselves 
consuls of Rome for the year 86 B.C. without 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 203 

any election and without even the formality of 
summoning a meeting of the comitia tributa. 
Much more serious than this was the disre- 
gard which was manifested by Marius and 
his followers for the Hfe and property of the 
Roman citizens. For several days Rome was 
given up to almost indiscriminate plunder 
and murder by the soldiers in the armies 
of Marius and Cinna; and after a stop was 
finally brought to this extra-judicial pillage 
and murder it was succeeded by a series 
of prosecutions almost as destructive, and 
fully as unjust. 

It was with these days of slaughter, the 
most sanguinary and unjust of Marius' s 
whole career, that his life was to end. He 
was now an old man of seventy, enfeebled by 
sickness and hardship, and after his desire 
for vengeance on his enemies had been satis- 
fied there appeared to him nothing left in 
life worth living for. Reports from the East 
indicated the military triumph of his great 
rival Sulla, and the prospect of the speedy 
return of the leader. To his other worries 
there was added the belief that the present 
triumph of his party was but temporary. 
Finally, overcome by sickness and melancholy, 



2 04 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

he took to his bed, and died at the end of 
seven days. Many beHeved that he had 
committed suicide, but the truth of this 
theory can never be anything but a matter 
of conjecture. 

Of the character of Marius little need be 
said. He was primarily a soldier, and only 
incidentally a politician. The debt which 
Rome owed to the military ability of Marius 
can hardly be overestimated. It is probable 
that but for his services the Roman republic 
might have been destroyed on either of two 
different occasions. 

As a politician Marius exerted little influ- 
ence on the course of the development of 
Roman history. The part which he played 
was rather forced upon him by circimistances 
and the conditions of the times than one 
which he himself created. His sympathies 
throughout were on the side of popular 
rights and equal justice. He supported the 
popular party at Rome against the oli- 
garchical party, and was one of the strongest 
sympathizers with the Italians in their efforts 
for the Roman franchise. He was the first 
to draw the sword to protect the rights of 
the people against the oligarchy, but the 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 205 

members of the oligarchy had themselves 
drawn it to overthrow the Gracchi, and force, 
having been entered into Roman politics, 
must be met with force, unless the people 
were willing to surrender all their claims to 
right and justice and permit the whole control 
of the state to pass to the aristocracy. 

The only real blemish upon the record of 
Marius is found in the cruel revenge which 
he took upon his enemies in the last years 
of his life. Even on this occasion there was 
something more than mere revenge and 
cruelty in the policy of Marius. If the con- 
trol of the popular party in Rome was to be 
permanent, it was necessary that the aristo- 
cratic party should be completely crushed 
before the return of Sulla from the East. 

In concluding the career of Gaius Marius, 
simimaries of his character given by two 
historians are here inserted : 

'"When Caius Gracchus fell,' said Mirabeau, 'he 
seized a handful of dust tinged with his blood and 
flung it toward the sky; from that dust was bom 
Marius.' This phrase of Mirabeau's, though a whit 
rhetorical, is historically true. The patricians were 
willing to cede nothing to the Gracchi, and they were 
decimated by Marius. The struggle changed its 
methods: one fought no more with laws as the only 



2o6 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

weapons, but yet more with proscriptions. Marius 
was the incarnated pleb; as ignorant, pitiless, formid- 
able, he had something of Danton, except that Danton 
was no soldier." (J. J. Ampere, L'Empire romaine 
d Rome.) 

"The judgment pronounced on Marius by posterity 
is not, like that on many other eminent men, wavering 
and contradictory. He is not one of those who to 
some have appeared heroes, to others malefactors, 
nor has he had to wait for ages, like Tiberius, before 
his true character became known. Disregarding the 
conscious misrepresentations of his personal enemies, 
we may say that he has always been taken for a good 
specimen of the genuine old Roman, uniting in his 
person in an exceptional degree the virtues and the 
faults of the rude illiterate peasant and the intrepid 
soldier. No one has ever ventured to deny that by 
his eminent military ability he rendered essential service 
to his country. Nobody has doubted his austere 
virtues, his simplicity and honesty, qualities by 
which, no less than by his genius for war, he gained 
for himself the veneration of the people. On the 
other hand, it is universally admitted that as a politician 
he was incompetent, and that he was only a tool in 
the hands of those with whom he acted. But morbid 
ambition and revengeful passion urged him at .last to 
deeds which make it doubtful whether it would not 
have been better for Rome if he had never been bom. 
He has, therefore, neither deserved nor obtained 
unmixed admiration; but as his darkest deeds were 
committed in moments when he was half mad from 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 207 

sufferings and indignities he had endured, and when 
perhaps he hardly knew what he was doing, he may, 
in the opinion of humane judges, gain by comparison 
with Sulla, who acted from reflection and in cool 
blood when he consigned thousands to death and 
enacted the horrid spectacle of the proscriptions." 
(William Ihne, The History of Rome.) 

Marius was succeeded as consul by Valerius 
Flaccus, who had held the same ofhce fourteen 
years before. The two consuls Cinna and 
Flaccus now attempted to fulfill the pledges 
to the Italians, and censors were elected for 
the express purpose of doing away with the 
eight (or ten) new Italian tribes and distrib- 
uting the Italians throughout the whole 
thirty-five tribes. 

Another important law passed at this time 
was in the nature of a temporary bankruptcy 
law for the relief of the Roman debtors. By 
this new law all debtors were enabled to clear 
themselves of their debts by paying one fourth 
of the amount owed. 

Sulla, in the meantime, had brought to a 
successful close the war against Mithridates, 
although, on account of his anxiety to return 
to Italy as soon as possible, he did not com- 
pletely crush the king of Pontus, as he could 
have done easily at this time. Disregarding 



2o8 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

the decree removing him from command of 
the army and appointing his successor, Sulla 
retained the command of his victorious army 
and returned with it to Italy, with the express 
purpose of crushing the popular party, and 
placed Rome once more completely under the 
control of the oligarchy. 

Even before starting for Italy Sulla had 
issued a manifesto which showed that no 
mercy could be expected for his opponents 
in the event of his success. The Roman 
Senate at this crisis made a feeble effort to 
act as a mediator between the rival parties. 
It sent an embassy to endeavor to dissuade 
Sulla to desist from his threatened vengeance, 
while on the other hand it forbade the consuls 
to make any military preparations to resist. 
Both parties disregarded the orders of the 
Senate. Cinna and Carbo, who were at that 
time the consuls of Rome, began to make 
large levies of soldiers for the purpose of 
resisting Sulla upon his return. An attempt 
by Cinna to lead an expedition to attack 
Sulla in the East was frustrated by the 
refusal of his soldiers to leave Italy, and Cinna 
himself was soon after murdered. 

After the death of Cinna, Carbo for some 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 209 

time remained as the sole consul of Rome. 
The worst possible use of this undivided 
power was made by the consul at this period, 
and his terror at the approach of Sulla was 
shown by the cruelty with which his enemies 
in the city were murdered or exiled. 

Sulla returned to Italy with only forty 
thousand soldiers, while the popular party, 
under Carbo and the younger Marius, a 
nephew of the veteran general, had secured 
an army said to have numbered two hundred 
thousand. The army of Sulla, however, was 
composed of trained veterans, and that of 
Carbo and Marius consisted, in the main, 
of inexperienced recruits. 

Soon after his return Sulla was joined by 
many of the senatorial party, with large levies 
of soldiers. Among the most notable acces- 
sions to the army of Sulla was that led by 
Cneius Pompey, at that time a youth of 
only twenty-three years of age but destined 
later to be the great rival of Julius Cassar 
for the first place in Roman politics. 

The war from the start went against the 
popular party, and its final outcome can 
hardly be said to have been at any time 
doubtful, although it dragged along for some 

14 



2IO THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

considerable time. The first important battle 
was near Capua, in the year 83 B.C., where 
the consul Norbanus was defeated by Sulla. 
The final fighting was around the city of Prse- 
neste, where all the generals of the popular 
party had made their headquarters. 

After the strength of the Roman popular 
party had been crushed, the fighting was 
still kept up by the combined forces of the 
Samnites, Lucanians, and Campanians, who, 
originally drawn into the war as allies of 
Carbo and Marius, now continued in a last 
desperate effort to overthrow Rome alto- 
gether. At the battle of the Colline Gate 
these allied Italian forces, under Pontius 
Telesinus, came very near inflicting a worse 
defeat upon Rome than this city had ever 
received. The left wing of the Roman army, 
commanded by Sulla, was in fact routed, 
and the battle was saved only by the 
right wing under the command of Crassus. 
In the end the victory of the Romans under 
Siilla in this battle was complete, and the 
great Italian general Pontius Telesinus was 
left dead upon the field. 

This battle practically ended the fighting, 
although a few unimportant cities still held 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 211 

out against Sulla for a short period. The 
long contest between the Romans and the 
Italians was now definitely over. The victory 
of the oligarchical party at Rome over the 
popular party was merely temporary, al- 
though the supremacy of the latter was 
never attacked during the lifetime of Sulla. 
The victory of Sulla was followed by the 
terrible proscriptions with which the name 
of this general must ever be associated. The 
nimiber of names appearing in the list of 
those who were proscribed, and liable to be 
killed by any one willing to carry out the 
orders of Sulla, reached the enormous total 
of forty-seven thousand. In this list were 
included most of the leaders of the popular 
party, all the personal enemies of Sulla 
himself, and also the names of all those whom 
for any reason of personal enmity or greed 
the friends of Sulla desired to have proscribed. 
It was only with the greatest difficulty that 
the friends of the young Julius Caesar were 
able to save his life on this occasion. There 
is an historic anecdote to the effect that 
Sulla, in sparing him, warned the aristocratic 
party to beware of him in the future, as in 
this young man there was more than one 



212 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Marius. It is hardly probable that this 
story is true, as Caesar at this time had done 
nothing to show his ability. 

The vengeance which Sulla took upon the 
Italians who had resisted him was even more 
terrible. Whole cities were destroyed, and 
the Samnite race was practically annihilated. 
The vengeance of Sulla extended even to 
the remote provinces, where the members 
of the popular party were everywhere hunted 
down and murdered. 

In the year 8i B.C. the dictatorship, which 
had been unknown in the Roman government 
for considerably more than a century, was 
once more resorted to, and by the means 
of this office Sulla obtained absolute power 
at Rome. The legal changes made by 
Sulla were few, but all in favor of the aristo- 
cratic party. The laws passed during the 
previous half century in favor of the people 
were disregarded. The presidency of the 
coiurts was limited to the nobility, and the 
jurymen were again taken from the senators. 
Sulla also secured the passage of a large 
number of stmiptuary laws of the most 
minute and, it might be added, of the most 
ridiculous character. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 213 

Because of poor health, Sulla was com- 
pelled, in the year 79 B.C., to resign the 
dictatorship, and he died the following year 
at the age of sixty. 

To such minds as naturally incline to the 
democratic side of political controversies, 
whether past or present, the character of 
Sulla will be apt to appear as perhaps that 
character in all Roman history most abso- 
lutely without a redeeming trait. 

Sulla's military triumphs consisted in the 
reconquest of provinces which had been 
goaded into rebellion by the terrible exactions 
of the Roman tax collectors and the un- 
speakable atrocities of the Roman slave 
hunters. 

The historians of the reactionary and aris- 
tocratic school, while they are able to find 
much to praise in the life and work of this 
bitterest of the enemies of human lives and 
liberty, are nevertheless compelled to qualify 
their praise because of the many features of 
his character and the many acts of his life 
which even they are compelled to condemn. 
The historian Charles Merivale has made 
perhaps as strong a plea for Sulla as it is 
possible to make, in the following words: 



214 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

"The personal rivalry of her two most fortunate 
generals becomes now the main channel of the history 
of Rome herself. In the year which closed the contest 
of the republic with her dependent allies (88), Sulla 
was forty-nine years old, Marius was about seventy. 
The former was enjoying the full breeze of popiilarity 
and renown, while the latter, wearied but not sated 
with acamiulated honours, was moodily throwing 
away the advantages he had earned in his earlier career. 
From campaign to campaign Sulla, as we have seen, 
had dogged the steps of the elder warrior, always ready 
to step in and seize the opportunities which the other 
cast recklessly in his way. Not that Marius in his 
exalted station was even from the first indifferent to 
this incipient rivalry. He was deeply jealous of his 
subordinate. He felt chagrin at the contrast presented 
by their respective birth and origin; for Sulla, though 
needy in point of fortune, was a scion of the illustrious 
house of the Comelii, and plumed himself on the 
distinction and advantage such a lineage conferred. 
Sulla, moreover, was trained in the accomplishments of 
Hellenic education, which Marius, conscious of his 
want of them, vainly affected to despise. Sulla 
wrote and spoke Greek; his memoirs of his own life 
became the text-book of the Greek historians of Rome, 
from whom we principally derive our acquaintance 
with him. But this varnish of superior culture seems 
to have failed in softening a rough plebeian nature. 
Sulla was one of many noble Romans who combined 
with pretensions to literary taste the love of gross 
debauchery, and pleasure in the society of mimes and 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 215 

vulgar jesters. He was a coarse sensualist, and by 
his disregard of the nuptial tie offended even the lax 
morality of his age. His eyes, we are told, were of a 
pure and piercing blue, and their sinister expression 
was heightened by the coarseness of his complexion and 
a countenance disfigured by pimples and blotches, 
compared by the raillery of the Greeks to a mulberry 
sprinkled with meal. His manners, except when he 
unbent in the society of his inferiors, were haughty 
and morose; nor is there any act of kindliness or 
generosity recorded of him. The nobles who accepted 
him as their champion had no personal liking for him. 
But selfish and ambitious though he was, the aggran- 
disement of his party and order was with Sulla a 
species of fanaticism. He despised the isolated 
ascendency of a Marius, and aspired to rule in Rome 
at the head of a dominant oligarchy. . . . 

"Slowly and with many a painful struggle the 
Roman commonwealth had outgrown the narrow 
limits of a rustic municipality. The few hundred 
famihes which formed the original nucleus of her 
citizenship, and which in her earliest and simplest days 
had sufficed to execute all the functions of her govern- 
ment, had been compelled to incorporate allies and 
rivals in their own body, to enlarge their views, and to 
expand their institutions. The main object of Sulla's 
policy was to revive at least the spirit of the old restric- 
tions. The old families themselves had perished almost 
to a man; he replaced them by a newer growth; but 
he strove to pare away the accretions of ages, and 
restore the government of the vast empire of Rome to 



2i6 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

a small section of her children. It contravened the es- 
sential principle of national growth; while the career 
of conquest, to which the Romans devoted themselves, 
required the most perfect freedom of development. 

"Nevertheless the legislation of Sulla was undoubt- 
edly supported by a vast mass of existing prejudice. 
He threw himself into the ideas of his time, as far as 
they were interpreted by history, by tradition, and by 
religious usage. The attempt to enlarge the limits of 
the constitution was in fact opposed to every acknowl- 
edged principle of polity. It was regarded equally 
by its opponents and its promoters as anomalous 
and revolutionary. It had as yet no foimdation in 
argument, or in any sense of right, as right was then 
understood. Society at Rome was in a highly artificial 
state; and Sulla, with many of his ablest contem- 
poraries, mistook for the laws of nature the institutions 
of an obsolete and forgotten expediency. But nature 
was carrying on a great work, and proved too strong 
for art. Ten years sufficed to overthrow the whole 
structure of this reactionary legislation, and to launch 
the republic once more upon the career of growth and 
development. The champions of a more liberal policy 
sprang up in constant succession, and contributed, 
perhaps unconsciously, to the great work of union 
and comprehension, which was now rapidly in progress. 
The spirit of isolation which had split Greece and 
Italy into hundreds of separate communities was 
about to give way to a general yearning for social 
and moral unity. The nations were to be trained by 
the steady development of the Roman administration. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 217 

"But though Sulla's main policy was thus speedily 
overthrown, he had not lived in vain. As dictator he 
wasted his strength in attempting what, if successful, 
would have destroyed his country; but as proconsul he 
has saved her. The tyranny of the Roman domination 
had set the provinces in a blaze. Mithridates had 
fanned the flame. Greece and Asia had revolted. 
The genius of the king of Pontus might have con- 
solidated an empire, such as Xerxes might have envied, 
on either shore of the .^Egean Sea. But at this crisis 
of her fate, hardly less imminent than when Hannibal 
was wresting from her allies and subjects within the 
Alps, Rome had confided her fortunes to the prowess 
of Sulla. The great victory of Chasronea checked the 
dissolution of her empire. The invader was hurled 
back across the .^gean; the cities of Greece returned 
reluctantly to their obedience, never more to be 
tempted to renounce it. Sulla followed Mithridates 
into Asia; one by one he recovered the provinces of the 
republic. He bound his foe by treaties to abstain from 
fomenting their discontents. He left his officers to 
enforce submission to his decrees, and quartered the 
armies of Rome upon the wretched populations of the 
East. The pressing danger of the moment was 
averted, though it took twenty years more to subdue 
the power of Mithridates, and reduce Asia to passive 
submission. Rome was relieved from the last of her 
foreign invaders; and this was the great work of Sulla, 
which deserved to immortalise his name in her annals." 



CHAPTER IX 

POMPEY 

OULLA had hoped by his proscriptions 
to so completely crush the popiilar 
party in Rome that the aristocratic party 
would be able to enjoy a long period of 
undisputed authority and absolute power. 
Hardly was Sulla buried, however, before the 
popular party began to show signs of life 
and renewed resistance. The consuls at the 
time of Sulla's death were Lepidus and 
Catulus, both of them elected on account of 
their supposed absolute loyalty to the policies 
of Sulla and their disregard of popular 
rights. The first named, however, soon be- 
gan to manifest symptoms of justice and 
humanity, and the Senate, alarmed at these 
views and his increasing popularity, sought 
to remove him from participation in Roman 
politics by sending him as proconsul to 
govern the (then considered) remote province 
of Cisalpine Gaul. This move only strength- 
ened the position of Lepidus, however, by 
providing him with an army. This army 
being augmented by recruits consisting partly 

218 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 219 

of enthusiastic adherents of the popiilar 
cause and partly of desperate adventurers, 
Lepidus considered himself strong enough 
to brave the chances of war, and began a 
march toward Rome. His army, however, 
was intercepted by the senatorial army sent 
to meet him, and Lepidus, completely de- 
feated, fled to Sardinia, where he soon died. 

One of the leading lieutenants of Lepidus 
in this campaign was Brutus, the father of 
the Brutus who was to be one of the assassins 
of Julius Caesar. The elder Brutus was 
taken prisoner at this time and put to death. 

In the meantime another rebellion broke 
out in Spain, where Sertorius had assimied 
the government. Neither Metellus nor Pom- 
pey was able to reduce him to submission, 
and the rebellion was put to an end only by 
the murder of Sertorius in 72 B.C. 

The epoch of civil wars had now fully 
begun for Rome, and the same year which 
witnessed the murder of Sertorius saw also 
the breaking out of the rebellion of the 
gladiators under Spartacus. This rebellion, 
starting in the mere uprising of a handful 
of gladiators, reached very large proportions 
and occasioned the greatest fear at Rome 



220 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

before it was put down by Crassus in the south 
of Italy and Pompey in the north. The 
credit for putting down this insurrection 
clearly belonged to Crassus rather than to 
Pompey, whose share in the work had been 
merely the destruction of a band of fugitives 
who had fled to the north of Italy. Never- 
theless, the Senate gave the highest honors 
to Pompey, who was voted a triumph, while 
only an ovation was granted to Crassus. 

Pompey and Crassus both sought election 
to the consulship, although both were in- 
eligible, since Crassus was still a praetor and 
under the laws should have waited two 
years before being a candidate for consul, 
and Pompey was only thirty-five years old 
and had not even been quaestor. Each of 
the candidates, however, had an army under 
his control at the very gates of Rome, and 
the two illegal elections were secured from 
the people by fear. Pompey and Crassus, the 
two most powerful men in Rome at this 
time, were thus consuls together in the 
year 70 B.C. 

Pompey, although he had been an ardent 
supporter of Sulla and a great favorite of this 
leader, nevertheless, upon his election as 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 221 

consul, began to depart from Sulla's policies. 
The proposals made by Pompey were the 
removal of the restrictions placed upon the 
tribunes by Sulla and a reform of the judicial 
system. The first proposal was consented 
to by the Senate after some slight protest, 
but the second met with bitter opposition. 
The complete control possessed by the Senate 
over the law courts was of such great 
value to them that they were determined 
to retain it, although the administration of 
the coiuts while under their control had 
been one long-continued scandal. The ad- 
ministration of justice under the knights, 
however, had been almost as corrupt as 
that of the Senate, and to avoid giving 
the complete control of the trials to either 
of these orders, the new law prepared by 
Pompey and proposed by the praetor urbanus 
Aurelius Cotta provided that one third of 
the jurymen should be furnished by the 
Senate, one third by the knights, and one 
third by the tribunes of the treasury. It 
was evident that the law was popular and 
would be adopted if it came to a vote. To 
prevent this, the senatorial party again 
prepared to engage in civil war. On this 



222 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

occasion, however, the resistance of the 
Senate was broken by the result of the still 
famous Verres trial. 

In connection with this trial it is necessary 
to go back and speak of the work of another 
of the great men in the new generation of Ro- 
man politicians. As early as the year 79 B.C. 
Cicero had won considerable reputation by 
his defense of Sextius Roscius. From 77 B.C. 
down to the period of which we are now 
writing Cicero had been actively engaged 
in the work of an advocate at Rome, except 
during the single year 75 B.C., when he served 
as a quaestor in Sicily, and during this period 
had risen in his profession until his reputation 
in the courts was second only to that of 
the greatest lawyer of the age, Hortensius. 

Cicero was now a candidate for sedile 
and tried to aid his candidacy by some 
signal achievements. Just at this time a 
number of the Sicilians, to whom Cicero 
had endeared himself by the honesty and 
ability with which he had exercised his duty 
as quaestor in their island, besought Cicero 
to undertake the prosecution of C. Cornelius 
Verres, who had just returned from three 
years' service as praetor in Sicily, in which 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 223 

province he had been guilty of the most 
extreme extortions, dishonesty, and cruelty. 
The evidence Cicero was able to produce 
against Verres, and the impassioned eloquence 
of the orations against him which he prepared 
(for the evidence against Verres was so un- 
answerable that his counsel, the great Horten- 
sius, threw up the case, and Verres fled into 
exile, thus depriving Cicero of an opportu- 
nity of delivering all the carefully prepared 
speeches orally in court) so demoralized the 
senatorial party that opposition to Cotta's 
bill now ceased, and the law was passed 
without further difficulty. 

In the same year, 70 B.C., censors were 
again appointed, after the office had been 
suspended for sixteen years, and the corrup- 
tion of the times, and particularly of the 
Senate, was shown by the fact that by the 
action of the censors sixty-four members of 
the Senate were degraded from their office. 

The greatest military triumphs in the life 
of Pompey were in the years following his 
consulship. In 67 B.C. he was sent to subdue 
the Sicilian pirates, armed with more complete 
powers than had ever before been voluntarily 
given by Roman citizens to any Roman general. 



224 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

"The terms of the proposal are extraordinary, and 
require close attention. First, a generalissimo was 
to be appointed by the senate from the consulars, to 
hold supreme command over the whole Mediterranean 
and over all the coast for fifty miles inland, concurrently 
with the ordinary governors, for three years. Second, 
he might select from the men of senatorial rank twenty- 
five lieutenants with pretorian powers, and two 
treasurers with questorian power. Third, he might 
raise an army of 120,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry, 
and a fleet of 500 ships, and for this purpose might 
dispose absolutely of all the resources of the provinces. 
Besides this, a large sum of money and a considerable 
force of men and ships were at once handed over to him. 

"By the introduction of this law the government 
was practically taken out of the hands of the senate; 
it was the final collapse of the oligarchic rule. But 
it was more than this — it was practically the institution 
of an unlimited dictatorship. 

"Like all extraordinary commands, this new office 
no doubt required the confirmation of the people; but 
it was an undoubted prerogative of the senate to define 
the sphere of every command, and, in fact, to control 
and limit it in all ways. The people had hitherto 
interfered only on the proposition of the senate, or at 
any rate of a magistrate himself qualified for the office 
of general. Even during the Jugurthan War, when 
the command was transferred to Marius by popular 
vote, it was only to Marius as consul for the year. 
But now a private man was to be invested by the tribes 
with extraordinary authority, and the sphere of his 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 225 

office was defined by themselves. The new commander 
was empowered to confer pretorian powers — that is, 
the highest miHtary and civil authority — upon adju- 
tants chosen by himself, though hitherto such authority 
could only be conferred with the cooperation of the 
burgesses; while the office of general, which was 
usually conferred for one year only, with strict limita- 
tions as to forces and supplies, was now committed 
almost without reserve to one man, who could draw 
upon the whole resources of the state. 

"Thus at one stroke the government was taken out 
of the hands of the senate, and the fortunes of the 
empire committed for the next three years to a dictator." 

The passage of this measure was one of 
the greatest triimiphs in the life of Pompey. 
The success of Pompey against the pirates 
was complete and immediate, and appeared 
in striking contrast with the ill-success which 
had attended the Roman armies in Asia 
during the previous few years. 

In 66 B.C. Gaius Manilius, one of the 
tribunes, introduced a bill recalling the Ro- 
man generals then conducting the war in 
Asia Minor and transferring the control of 
the Roman armies in this section to Pompey, 
giving also to Pompey the full power to 
make peace and alliances. This proposed law 
brought about a most peculiar condition of 

15 



226 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

affairs in Roman politics. Few, if any, truly 
favored the procedure, which was in direct 
violation of all the principles of the Roman 
constitution — a greater violation even than 
the law which had conferred upon Pompey 
his extraordinary powers as proconsul of 
the seas. But while everybody feared the 
passage of this law, everybody, with the 
exception of the extreme aristocratic party 
led by Catulus, feared more to oppose it, 
and the law was passed with little opposition. 

From a military standpoint this grant of 
power to Pompey was justified by the re- 
sults. Inside of three years he succeeded in 
completely overthrowing both Mithridates, 
the old king of Pontus, Rome's most dreaded 
enemy, and Tigranes, the king of Armenia. 
These successes of Pompey were followed by 
the conquest of the greater part of Syria. 
From the conquests of Pompey in the East 
four new Roman provinces were formed: 
(i) Pontus and Bithynia; (2) Cilicia, includ- 
ing Isauria and Pamphylia; (3) Syria; (4) 
Crete. 

The demoralizing effect of these laws con- 
ferring such powers upon Pompey were soon 
to manifest themselves, Rome was rapidly 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 227 

becoming accustomed to the disregard of the 
forms of government and of law, and to 
the sight of vast and irresponsible powers 
being granted to a single individual. These 
were the two things needed to prepare Rome 
to quietly acquiesce in the abandonment of 
the republic and the creation of a despotism. 
There is never a time in any country where 
too great a responsibility or power can be 
given to a single individual without the 
greatest danger to the future of the country. 
The right of the people to rule is both meaning- 
less and valueless if such right is merely 
to consist in the right to delegate all the 
duties and powers of government to the 
custody of a single individual. A govern- 
ment can continue free only where the active 
control of public affairs is widely distributed, 
and where the masses of the people are not 
afraid to accept responsibility and do not 
attempt to throw the responsibility for their 
safety and welfare upon the shoulders of a 
single individual. Where a single individual 
becomes indispensable to any free people it 
is a sign of the degeneracy of the people rather 
than of the greatness of the man. 



CHAPTER X 
Cicero and Catiline 

POLITICAL honors under the Roman 
repubUc were generally to be won only 
by military success, or by aggressive leader- 
ship in the factional politics of the city. 
The single instance of a man's rise to a leading 
place in Roman politics solely through the 
power of his oratory is found in the case of 
Marcus TuUius Cicero. His success in the 
defense of Roscius and in the prosecution 
of Verres, as well as his growing reputation 
as a lawyer and orator, have already been 
referred to. 

In 65 B.C. Cicero was a successful candidate 
for the consulship. His letters written to 
his friend Atticus at Athens, during his 
campaign, give a most vivid insight into the 
practical Roman politics of the times, and 
show us the striking similarity, in many 
respects, between the political battles of 
the Roman republic and our own election 
contests. 

In one of his early letters Cicero wrote: 
"Let me tell you that there is no class of 

228 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 229 

people so harassed by every kind of unreason- 
able difficulty as candidates for office." 

In a later letter he discusses the details 
of his campaign as follows: 

"The state of things in regard to my candidature, 
in which I know that you are supremely interested, is 
this, as far as can be as yet conjectured. The only 
person actually canvassing is P. Sulpicius Galba. He 
meets with a good old-fashioned refusal without 
reserve or disguise. In the general opinion this pre- 
mature canvass of his is not unfavorable to my inter- 
ests; for the voters generally give as a reason for their 
refusal that they are under obligations to me. So I 
hope my prospects are to a certain degree improved 
by the report getting about that my friends are found 
to be numerous. My intention was to begin my own 
canvass just at the very time that Cincius tells me that 
yoiur ser\'-ant starts with this letter, namely, in the 
campus at the time of the tribunician election, on the 
17th of July. My fellow candidates, to mention only 
those who seem certain, are Galba and Antonius, and 
Q. Comificius. At this I imagine you smiling or sigh- 
ing. Well, to make you positively smite your fore- 
head, there are people who actually think that Caesonius 
will stand. I do not think Aquitius will, for he openly 
disclaims it and has alleged as an excuse his health and 
his leading position at the bar. Catiline will certainly 
be a candidate, if you can imagine a jury finding that 
the sun does not shine at noon. As for Aufidius and 
Policanus, I do not think you will expect to hear from 



230 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

me about them. Of the candidates for this year's 
election, Caesar is considered certain. Thermus is 
looked upon as the rival of Silanus. These latter are 
so weak both in friends and reputation that it seems 
possible to me to bring in Curius over both. But 
no one else seems to think so. What seems most to 
my interests is that Thermus should get in with Cassar. 
For there is none of those at present canvassing who, 
if left over to my year, seems likely to be a stronger 
candidate, from the fact that he is commissioner of 
the via Flaminia, and when that has been finished 
I shall be greatly relieved to have seen him elected 
consul this election. Such in outline is the position 
of affairs in regard to candidates up to date. For 
myself I shall take the greatest pains to carry out all 
the duties of a candidate, and perhaps, as Gaul seems 
to have a considerable voting power, as soon as business 
at Rome has come to a standstill I shall obtain a libera 
legatio and make an excursion in the course of Septem- 
ber to visit Piso, but so as not to be back later than 
January. When I have ascertained the feelings of 
the nobility, I shall let you know. You must under- 
take to secure for me the support of our friend Pompey, 
since you are nearer to him than I. Tell him I shall 
not be annoyed if he does not come to my election." 

The year of Cicero's consulship (64 B.C.) 
was disturbed by the famous conspiracy of 
Lucius Sergius Catiline. It was in this 
conspiracy, and during this consulship, that 
the culmination was reached of the discontent 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 231 

and plotting which had been fermenting at 
Rome for a nimiber of years among a large 
class of the Roman nobility. The most 
discontented men in any community are 
generally to be found among those who, 
while belonging by birth to the upper classes 
of society, and accustomed to and desirous 
of the luxuries of life, have lost their fortunes 
and are unable to live in the style to which 
they consider themselves as of right entitled. 
Rome, at this time, was filled with this class 
of malcontents, the extravagant and wasteful 
style of living, combined with the reckless 
gambling of the age, having reduced great 
niimbers among the young nobles almost 
to beggary. 

The overthrow of Sulla's system of govern- 
ment, resulting from the defection of Pompey 
and the consequential loss of power and 
prestige by the Senate, had also roused a 
bitter feeling of resentment among the whole 
aristocratic party. The effect of this resent- 
ment upon the more solid and substantial 
element of this party had been to lead them 
to make preparations for the overthrow of 
Pompey upon his return to Rome; while 
the effect upon the ruined young nobles was 



232 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

to render them more than ever ready for any 
desperate undertaking by which they stood 
a chance of repairing their fortunes. 

No cause, whether good or bad, ever 
lacks a leader; and the leader at this time 
was found in Catiline, a young noble of the 
most profligate character, but of some degree 
of ability and possessed of boundless audacity 
and ambition. 

Catiline was descended from one of the 
oldest families in Rome, and his loyalty to 
the cause of the aristocracy was proved by 
the ferocity with which he had served under 
Sulla and had assisted in carrying into 
execution his most bloodthirsty orders. 
Catiline did not fail to derive some profit 
from these terrible times, as he secured the 
proscription and murder of his brother and 
the grant to himself of his brother's forfeited 
estate. 

In spite of these and many other equally 
heinous crimes, Catiline had been elected 
praetor in 68 B.C. and had then spent two 
years in the government of Africa. Return- 
ing to Rome in 66 B.C., he at once offered 
himself as a candidate for the consulship. 
His political hopes on this occasion, however, 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 233 

were wrecked by an accusation of misconduct 
in the government of his province, brought 
against him by PubHus Clodius. In revenge, 
CatiHne then conspired with Autronius Psetus, 
who had just been deprived of the consulship 
for bribery, and other profligate and reckless 
nobles, to murder Cotta and Manilius, the 
successful candidates for consul, and to 
seize the government. According to rumor, 
both Crassus and Caesar were connected with 
the conspiracy. The conspiracy was dis- 
covered and the enterprise was abandoned; 
but the proceedings against the suspected 
conspirators were stopped by the interposi- 
tion of one of the tribunes, and the facts of 
the matter were never definitely ascertained. 
It is a peculiar fact that Cicero was ready, 
at this time, to defend Catiline against the 
charges of Clodius; which charges, however, 
were dropped, without being brought to 
trial. Two years later, Catiline was again a 
candidate for consul, but was defeated by 
Cicero and Antonius. Catiline now began to 
make preparations for civil war. The plot 
was betrayed by a woman. Curius, one of 
Catiline's adherents, boasted of the plot to 
his mistress Fulvia, and she not only gave 



234 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

information of the plot to Cicero but entered 
into his employ as a spy upon the conspirators. 

In spite of the overwhelming character of 
the evidence against him, Catiline continued 
on his course with the utmost assurance and 
insolence. He even took his place in the 
Senate, and upon being attacked by Cicero 
replied, "There are two parties in the com- 
monwealth; the nobles, weak in both head 
and body; the people, strong in body, but 
headless. I intend to supply this body with 
a head." 

On the seventh of November Catiline 
attempted the assassination of Cicero by two 
of his adherents, C. Cornelius and L. Var- 
gunteius. Cicero was immediately informed 
of this attempt by his spies, and the attempt 
was blocked. The following day Cicero sum- 
moned a meeting of the Senate, and upon 
Catiline appearing in his place, Cicero burst 
out in the first of those famous orations against 
Catiline, so well known to all Latin students, 
which begins: "How long, O Catiline, will 
you thus abuse our patience? To what end 
will your unrestrained audacity display itself?" 

It is always one of the most difficult of 
tasks to persuade the citizens of any republic 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 235 

that any political leader is actually planning 
the overthrow of the republican form of 
government. This blindness, not restricted 
to any one race or age, was so dense at this 
time in Rome that many people had refused 
to believe even in the existence of the con- 
spiracy of Catiline, and had suspected Cicero 
of having invented the whole story with 
the object of making political capital for 
himself. 

The fierce fire in the Senate of the oration 
by Cicero against Catiline, however, proved 
sufficient to force Catiline to action; and the 
night after Cicero's first oration against him 
Catiline fled to Tuscany to join the forces 
which had been collected there under his 
lieutenant Manlius. Catiline, keeping up his 
deceit and duplicity to the end, even while 
en route to the army of the conspirators 
wrote letters to Rome declaring that he was 
the victim of a conspiracy and that his present 
purpose was to go into voluntary banishment 
at Marseilles. 

Upon reaching his army Catiline threw off 
the mask and prepared to take active steps for 
the overthrow and destruction of Rome. The 
conspiracy had now passed the point where it 



236 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

was merely intended to overthrow the duly 
elected Roman officials, and to install Catiline 
and his friends in their places ; the conspirators 
now sought nothing less atrocious than the 
sack of Rome and the murder of her wealthiest 
citizens. The contest had now become one 
directed against the rich class of the nobles by 
the poor and bankrupt members of the same 
order, assisted by all the unprincipled and 
desperate adventurers of Italy. 

The plans of Catiline and his supporters 
were that the army in Tuscany should march 
upon Rome, while the friends of Catiline in the 
city should watch for a favorable opportunity 
to murder the consuls and set fire to the city. 

To meet this two-sided danger Antonius 
was sent with an army against Catiline, while 
Cicero remained in Rome to secure the safety 
of the city. Cicero was the first to complete 
his part of the work. The untiring efforts of 
the consul at length resulted in securing legal 
proof against the leading conspirators who 
had remained at Rome, and these were imme- 
diately arrested and brought to trial. The 
people were at length convinced of the truth 
of the conspiracy, but even now it was only 
with the greatest difficulty that Cicero was 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 237 

able to have the death sentence decreed 
against the prisoners. 

CatiHne now attempted to retreat into Gaul, 
but was pursued by Antonius, and in the 
battle which ensued the army of Catiline 
was cut to pieces and Catiline himself killed. 

Cicero had earned the gratitude of Rome by 
preserving it from its threatened destruction 
at the hands of Catiline; but the rest of his 
record as consul was not of a very creditable 
character. Throughout his year of office 
Cicero was the consistent champion of the 
senatorial party, and the opponent of all 
measures to improve the economic conditions 
of the people. In particular, Cicero is to be 
censured for his opposition to the agrarian 
law proposed at this time. Cicero was also 
largely responsible for the defeat of a bill 
to restore the right of citizenship to the chil- 
dren of the men who had been proscribed 
by Sulla. 



■ CHAPTER XI 
Julius C^sar 

TT NOW remains to relate the life history 
of the man by whom the republican form 
of government at Rome was fated to be finally 
overthrown. That the existence of this Ro- 
man republic was doomed, that democratic or 
oligarchical government must give way either 
to anarchy or despotism, had been certain ever 
since the refusal of the Roman citizens to sup- 
port the attempted reforms of the Gracchi. 

There is no greater obstacle to the complete 
success of popular government than the almost 
inexplicable tendency of the majority of men 
to crucify the true reformer and conscientious 
lover of humanity as a disturber of, and a men- 
ace to, society, and to heap honors upon the 
head of the selfish, unprincipled, egotistical, 
and vicious demagogue. The result is that 
the reforms which might save the country 
fail; and later the people, at last roused to a 
realization of the evils which surround them, 
grasp at the promises of the imposter and 
follow him with hysterical and insane enthu- 
siasm until their false leader directs their 

238 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 239 

footsteps to the precipice, over which they fall 
to their destruction. If France had adopted 
the moderate reforms of Necker and Turgot 
she might have been saved from the terrible 
retribution of the French Revolution ; if Rome 
had not rejected the leadership of Tiberius 
Gracchus, and later accepted that of Julius 
Caesar, the Roman republic need not have 
fallen. 

Julius Csesar was born in the year 100 B.C. 
His family were of old patrician stock, and 
in addition were possessed of considerable 
wealth, but the share that was inherited by 
young Julius was very quickly squandered. 
From the outset of his career Cssar exhibited 
talents of a widely diversified character, show- 
ing literary ability as well as strength and 
skill in athletic exercises and in military life. 
With all these Csesar combined a dissipated 
character, and extreme selfish ambition. 
Caesar, by the accidental course of events, 
became allied with the popular party at Rome ; 
but throughout his whole life it was with him 
merely a case of using the popular favor as a 
means to promote his personal ends; never a 
case of sacrificing himself, his ambition, or 
his pleasure for the people's welfare. It was 



240 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

by marriage that Caesar had become connected 
with the popular party, his aunt Julia having 
become the wife of Marius, while he himself 
had married the daughter of Cinna, the col- 
league of Marius in his last consulship. On 
account of these marriage relations Caesar 
barely escaped being included in the proscrip- 
tions of Sulla. He finally succeeded in making 
his peace with Sulla, and received his first 
military experience under Thermus, whom 
Sulla had left to besiege Mitylene. In this 
campaign young Caesar distinguished himself 
by winning a civic crown for saving the life 
of a citizen. After the death of Sulla C^sar 
made his first attempt to attract attention in 
the political field by impeaching Dolabella 
for extortion in his administration in Mace- 
donia. Although Dolabella was acquitted, 
Caesar acquired some reputation from this 
affair. 

This trial persuaded Caesar that he should 
take up the field of oratory, and he accordingly 
set out to study rhetoric at Rhodes under 
Molo, the great teacher in this subject at that 
time. On his way, Cassar underwent the 
second great peril of his life by being captured 
by Cilician pirates. After being ransomed 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 241 

he abandoned the idea of studying rhetoric, 
and instead fitted up an expedition with 
which he captured his former captors, whom 
he crucified at Pergamus. In 74 B.C. Caesar 
was elected one of the pontifices at Rome, and 
immediately returned to the city, where he 
spent several years in ease and pleasure, not 
neglecting, however, to use every effort to win 
the favor of the populace. 

Caesar was elected quaestor in 68 B.C., and 
it was during his year in this office that he 
made his first bold play to secure the popu- 
lar support. His aunt Julia, the widow of 
Marius, dying, Caesar delivered a panegyric 
over her in which he spoke far less about his 
aunt than about her husband Marius, still the 
great idol of the popular party, and in defiance 
of a still unrepealed statute of Sulla he caused 
the bust of Marius to be carried among the 
family images. 

In 65 B.C. Caesar was elected aedile. He was 
obliged to plunge himself heavily into debt to 
obtain this office; and after his election he did 
not hesitate to go still deeper into debt for the 
purpose of providing magnificent shows for 
the people at the public games. In virtue of 
the power of his office Caesar placed the statue 

16 



242 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

of Marius, surrounded by the trophies of his 
Cimbrian and Jugurthine victories, among 
the new ornaments of the capitol. At the 
close of his term as ^dile Csesar sought to be 
sent to Egypt for the purpose of forming 
Egypt into a Roman province, in accordance 
with the will of the Egyptian king, Ptolemy 
Alexander. This important mission, however, 
was denied to Caesar, to whom was assigned 
the duty of presiding in the tribunal which 
conducted the investigation in cases of sus- 
pected murder. 

The following year, the year of the consul- 
ship of Cicero and the conspiracy of Catiline, 
Csesar passed temporarily under a cloud on 
account of his suspected connection with the 
conspiracy. The suspicion that Caesar had 
at least been privy to the plans of the con- 
spirators was strengthened by his efforts to 
prevent the death sentence being passed 
against their leaders. 

The Roman historian Sallust, in his history 
of Catiline, has reported Caesar's speech in the 
Senate on this occasion, which serves to illus- 
trate the craftiness of the man. A portion 
of this speech is here inserted: 

"In all debates, Conscript Fathers, when the matter 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 243 

under deliberation is in its nature doubtful, it is the 
duty of every senator to bring to the question a mind 
free from animosity and friendship, from anger and 
compassion. When those emotions prevail, the under- 
standing is clouded, and truth is scarcely perceived. 
To be passionate and just at the same time is not in 
the power of man. Reason, when imbiased, and left 
to act with freedom, answers all our purposes; when 
passion gains the ascendant, reason is fatigued, and 
judgment lends no assistance. 

"In the case now before us, let it be our wisdom, 
Conscript Fathers, not to suffer the crimes of Lentulus 
and his accompHces to hurry you beyond the bounds 
of moderation. Indignation may operate on your 
minds, but a due sense of your own dignity, I trust, 
will preponderate. My opinion is this; if you know 
of any pains and penalties adequate to the guilt of 
the conspirators, pronounce your judgment; I have 
no objection. If you think death a sufficient punish- 
ment, I concur with Silanus; but if the guilt of the 
prisoners exceeds all forms of vindictive justice, we 
should rest contented with the laws known to the 
constitution. 

"The senators who have gone before me have 
exhausted the colors of rhetoric, and in a pathetic 
style have painted forth the miseries of their country. 
They have displayed the horrors of war, and the 
wretched condition of the vanquished; the young of 
both sexes suffering violation; children torn from the 
mother's arms; virtuous matrons exposed to the brutal 
passions of the conqueror; the houses of citizens, and 



244 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

the temples of the gods, pillaged without distinction; 
the city made a theater of blood and horror; in a 
word, desolation and massacre in every quarter. 

"But why, immortal gods! why all that waste of 
eloquence? Was it to inflame our passions? to kindle 
indignation? to excite a detestation of rebellion? If 
the guilt of these men is not of itself sufficient to fire 
us with resentment, is it in power of words to do it? 
I answer. No; resentment is implanted in our hearts 
by the hand of natiure; every man is sensible of injury 
and oppression; many are apt to feel too intensely. 
But we know, Conscript Fathers, that resentment does 
not operate alike in all the ranks of life: he who 
dwells in obscurity may commit an act of violence, but 
the consequence is confined to a small circle. The 
fame of the offender, like his fortune, makes no noise 
in the world. It is otherwise with those who figure in 
exalted stations; the eyes of mankind are upon them; 
and the wrong they do is considered an abuse of power. 
Moderation is the virtue of superior rank. In that 
preeminence, no apology is allowed for the injustice 
that proceeds from partiality, from anger, aversion, 
or animosity. The injury committed in the lower 
classes of life is called the impulse of sudden passion; 
in the higher stations, it takes the name of pride and 
cruelty. . . , 

"With regard to capital punishment, it is a truth 
well known that to the man who lives in distress and 
anguish of heart, death is not an evil; it is a release 
from pain and misery; it puts an end to the calamities 
of life; and after the dissolution of the body, all is 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 24S 

peace; neither care nor joy can then intrude. . . . 

"It may be said, who will object to a decree against 
the enemies of their country? The answer is obvious; 
time may engender discontent; a future day may 
condemn the proceeding; unforeseen events and even 
chance, that with wild caprice perplexes human affairs, 
may give us reason to repent. The punishment of 
traitors, however severe, cannot be more than their 
flagitious deeds deserve; but it behooves us, Conscript 
Fathers, to weigh well the consequences before we 
proceed to judgment. Acts of state, that sprung from 
policy, and were perhaps expedient on the spur of the 
occasion, have grown into precedents often found to 
be of evil tendency. The administration may fall into 
the hands of ignorance and incapacity; and in that 
case, the measure, which at first was just and proper, 
becomes by misapplication to other men and other 
times the rule of bad policy and injustice. 

"It must be admitted that, in times like the present, 
when Marcus TuUius Cicero conducts the administra- 
tion, scenes of that tragic nature are not to be appre- 
hended. But in a large populous city, when the minds 
of men are ever in agitation, a variety of jarring 
opinions must prevail. At a future day and under 
another consul, who may have an army at his back, 
falsehood may appear in the garb of truth, and gain 
universal credit. In such a juncture, should the 
consul, encouraged by our example, and armed with 
the power by the decree of the Senate, think proper 
to tmsheath the sword, who shall stop him in his career? 
who will be able to appease his vengeance? . . . 



246 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

"But you will say, What is the scope of this long 
argument? Shall the conspirators be discharged, and 
suffered to strengthen Catiline's army? Far from it; 
my advice is this; let their estate and effects be con- 
fiscated; detain their persons in separate prisons, and 
for that purpose choose the strongest of the mtinicipal 
towns; declare, by a positive law, that no motion 
in their favor shall be brought forward in the Senate, 
and that no appeal shall be made to the people. Add 
to your decree, that whoever shall presume to espouse 
the cause of the guilty shall be deemed an enemy to 
the Commonwealth." 

The year following the conspiracy of Cati- 
line Caesar secured the office of praetor. By 
this time Caesar had secured such a hold 
upon the popular mind as to excite both 
the fear and hatred of the senatorial party. 
This fear and hatred were manifested during 
Caesar's year of office as praetor by the 
Senate passing a decree depriving Caesar and 
one of the tribunes (Caecilius Metellus Cepos) 
of their offices. Fear of popular violence, 
however, soon induced the Senate to repeal 
this decree. 

In December, 62 B.C., there occurred at 
Rome one of the best remembered of his- 
torical scandals; but one whose exact nature 
we are unable to determine on account of lack 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 247 

of knowledge of the character of the mysteries 
which were violated. 

The historian Merivale thus describes this 
scandal : 

"P. Clodius, the corrupt accuser of Catiline, a tur- 
bulent intriguer like so many members of his house, 
had ingratiated himself with the people by his popular 
manners. This beardless youth, already alike noto- 
rious for his debts and gallantries, had introduced him- 
self into Caesar's house in female attire during the 
celebration of the rites of the Bona Dea, which should 
have been studiously guarded from male intrusion. 
A servant maid discovered him and uttered a cry of 
alarm; the mysteries were hastily veiled, and the 
intruder expelled; but the assembled matrons rushing 
hastily home revealed each to her husband the scandal 
and the sin. The nobles affected grave alarm; the 
pontiffs were simmioned and consulted, and the people 
duly informed of the insult offered to the deity. As 
chief of the sacred college, Caesar could not refrain 
from lending himself to the general clamour; but his 
position was delicate. On the one hand, the presumed 
delinquent was an instrument of his own policy, while 
on the other his own honour and that of his wife 
Pompeia were compromised by the offence. He dis- 
appointed everybody. He divorced his wife, not 
because she was guilty, but because 'the wife of Csesar,' 
as he said, 'should be above suspicion,' But he refused 
to countenance the measures which the consuls took, 
by direction of the senate, for the conviction of the 



248 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

reputed culprit; and it may be suspected that the 
money with which Clodius bribed his judges was a 
loan negotiated with Crassus by Caesar himself. 
Cicero for his part had been lukewarm in an affair, 
the barefaced hypocrisy of which he was perhaps too 
honourable to countenance; but, urged by his wife 
Terentia, a violent woman who meddled much in his 
affairs, and was jealous at the moment of a sister of 
the culprit, he clearly disproved his allegation of 
absence from the city, and thus embroiled himself, 
to no purpose, with an able and unscrupulous enemy. 
The senate believed their cause gained; the proofs 
indeed were decisive, and they had assigned at their 
own request a military guard to the judges to protect 
them from the anticipated violence of a Clodian mob ; 
but to their consternation, on opening the urns, the 
votes for an acquittal were found to be thirty-one 
opposed to twenty-five. 'You only demanded a 
guard,' then exclaimed Catulus with bitter irony, 'to 
secure the money you were to receive.' Cicero attrib- 
uted to Crassus the scandal of this perversion of 
justice; the nobles sneered at the corruption of the 
knights, and the gulf which separated the two orders 
yawned more widely than ever." 

In 60 B.C. Caesar was given the command of 
the province of Farther Spain; and it was 
here that his great military abilities were for 
the first time displayed to the world. It had 
only been by the means of a large loan (about 
one million dollars) received from Crassus that 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 249 

Csesar was enabled to pay off his most pressing 
creditors, and to make preparations for his 
journey to Spain; into such a financial state 
had Caesar been reduced by his personal 
extravagances, his political campaign expenses, 
and his lavish expenditures to win the popu- 
lar favor. 

Upon Caesar's return from Rome the young 
general found Pompey still further alienated 
from the senatorial party. A comparison of 
the character of these two Roman leaders, now 
for a while about to become close associates 
and later (mainly through the limitless ambi- 
tion and unprincipled conduct of Caesar) rivals 
in a bitter contest for supremacy, is perhaps 
proper at this time. The briefest comparison 
which can be made perhaps consists in saying 
that Pompey represented the best type of an 
aristocrat — Caesar the worst type of the 
hypocritical popular demagogue. Neither 
man consistently stood for those things 
which he was supposed to represent at the 
outset of his career; neither man, it is prob- 
able, ever really believed in them. The 
training and antecedents of Pompey were of 
the extreme oligarchical character; his natural 
leanings were toward htimanity and justice. 



250 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Caesar, shouting his championship of the 
people from the housetops, was in practice 
regardless of everything but his own selfish 
ambitions. The populace which he flattered, 
deceived, and betrayed were to him merely 
the tools by which his success was to be won 
and occupied about the same position in his 
philosophy of life as the dice with which he 
won large sums of money in gambling. 

Pompey was imbued with a strong sense of 
the sanctity of the law; Caesar never regarded 
any law which stood between him and his 
goal. Pompey dismissed his victorious troops 
before he approached Rome on his return 
from his Eastern campaigns; C^sar did not 
hesitate to lead his legions across the Rubicon. 
Neither possessed any great degree of con- 
structive political ability. Pompey's life was 
one devoted to an attempt to preserve, Caesar's 
was devoted to an attempt to destroy. 
Caesar's ability was far greater than that of 
Pompey in every field of human activity. 

Caesar's Spanish campaign had been so 
short in duration that he was enabled to 
return to Rome in time to run for the consul- 
ship in 60 B.C. In order to begin his canvass 
without delay, Caesar asked leave to enter the 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 251 

city before receiving his tritimph. This per- 
mission being refused, mainly through the 
influence of Cato and Cicero, Caesar gave up 
his claim to a triumph and, entering Rome 
immediately, began his political campaign. 
Being again hard up for money, Caesar made 
an agreement with a very wealthy candidate 
for consul, named L. Lucceius, by the terms 
of which Lucceius was to provide the campaign 
funds for both candidates, while C^sar was 
to furnish the reputation and popularity. 
This combination resulted better for Caesar 
than for Lucceius; Caesar received his share 
of the benefit from the campaign fund, but 
the benefit of his popularity did not seem to 
extend to his running mate. The election 
resulted in the choice of Caesar and M. Cal- 
purnius Bibulus, the candidate of the Cato- 
Cicero faction. 

At this time Caesar persuaded Pompey and 
Crassus to form the first triimivirate with him. 
This triumvirate was nothing more nor less 
than a Roman political machine, by means of 
which these three men expected to be able to 
make themselves the political bosses of the 
city. To cement this political union, Pompey 
married Julia, the daughter of Caesar. 



252 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

The most important event of Caesar's con- 
sulship was the passage of an agrarian act 
providing for the division of pubHc lands in 
Campania among the old soldiers of Pompey. 
The members of the triumvirate proved them- 
selves to be strong enough to force this meas- 
ure through in spite of the opposition of the 
consul Bibulus, of Cato, and of others. 

The measure was not passed, however, 
without considerable violence and disregard 
of the technical rules of the Roman law. 

The Senate, acting under the authority of 
the Sempronian Law, had assigned the woods 
and roads as the provinces to which the 
consuls of the year were to be assigned after 
the expiration of their terms of office. Csesar, 
however, who throughout his career never 
bothered himself very much as to what the 
law was, secured the passage by the comitia 
tributa of a law introduced by the tribune 
Vatinius, which gave to Caesar the provinces 
of Cisalpine Gaul and lUyricum and three 
legions for five years. Later the Senate (to 
prevent another appeal by Caesar to the 
people) added Transalpine Gaul and another 
legion to his command. The time of his 
command was also later extended. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 253 

It was the success of Caesar's Gallic cam- 
paigns (58-51 B.C.) which rendered possible 
his overthrow of the republic, and the impor- 
tance of this war is therefore very great, but 
it is unnecessary to deal with the military 
details of these campaigns. 

During the years of Caesar's absence from 
Rome the first triimivirate had fallen to 
pieces. In the year 55 B.C. Pompey and 
Crassus, without opposition, had been elected 
to the consulship for a second term. At the 
conclusion of this consulship Crassus was 
sent with an army against the Parthians, by 
whom he was defeated and killed in 53 B.C. 
In the meantime Julia, daughter of Caesar and 
wife of Pompey, had died at Rome in 54 B.C. 
Crassus and Julia had been the two persons 
who had kept Csesar and Pompey together, 
and from this time these two leaders rapidly 
drifted apart. 

All this time affairs at Rome were constantly 
falling into worse and worse stages of corrup- 
tion and confusion. In 58 B.C. (through the 
efforts of Caesar's friends, led by Clodius) 
Cicero had been banished from Rome; in 
57 B.C. he was recalled, and honors were 
heaped upon him. 



254 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

In 54 B.C. all the candidates for the consul- 
ship were prosecuted for bribery, and the 
consular elections postponed seven months. 
Many wanted Pompey named as dictator at 
this period. A little later he actually served 
for a considerable period as sole consul. It 
would probably have been possible for Pom- 
pey, at this time, to have anticipated Caesar 
and to have made himself emperor of Rome, 
but his efforts were rather directed toward 
the restoration of the old order of things in 
the republic. The course of events had 
once more united Pompey with the moderate 
senatorial party. 

The election of 52 B.C. was notable, even 
among the other elections of this period, for 
the enormous extent of the corruption funds 
used by the various candidates. In the course 
of this campaign the notorious Clodius, who 
was a candidate for prastor, with a retinue 
of friends and clients one day chanced to 
encounter T, Annius Milo, a candidate for 
consul belonging to the senatorial party, with 
a like body of retainers. A conflict resulted 
in which Clodius was killed. The next day 
Clodius' s friends, aided by all the lawless 
elements of the Roman population, made a 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 255 

pyre for the corpse out of the seats of the 
senate house and burned the dead body of 
Clodius and the senate house together. 

The Roman historian Florus thus reviews 
the situation reached by the Roman repubhc 
at the time of the civil war between Caesar 
and Pompey: 

"This is the third age of the Roman people, with 
reference to its transactions beyond the sea; an age 
in which, when they had once ventured beyond Italy, 
they carried their arms through the whole world. Of 
which age, the first hundred years were pure and pious, 
and, as I have called them, 'golden'; free from vice 
and immorality, as there yet remained the sincere and 
harmless integrity of the pastoral life, and the imminent 
dread of a Carthaginian enemy supported the ancient 
discipline. 

"The succeeding hundred, reckoned from the fall 
of Carthage, Corinth and Numantia, and from the 
inheritance bequeathed us by King Attalus in Asia, 
to the times of Ceesar and Pompey, and those of 
Augustus who succeeded them, and of whom we shall 
speak hereafter, were as lamentable and disgraceful 
for the domestic calamities, as they were honourable 
for the lustre of the warlike exploits that distinguished 
them. For, as it was glorious and praiseworthy to 
have acquired the rich and powerful provinces of 
Gaiil, Thrace, Cilicia, and Cappadocia, as well as those 
of the Armenians and Britons, so it was disgraceful 
and lamentable at the same time to have fought at 



2s6 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

home with our own citizens, with our allies, our slaves, 
our gladiators. 

"I know not whether it would have been better for 
the Romans to have been content with Sicily and 
Africa, or even to have been without them, while still 
enjoying the dominion of Italy, than to grow to such 
greatness as to be ruined by their own strength. For 
what else produced these intestine distractions but 
excessive good fortime? It was the conquest of Syria 
that first corrupted us, and the succession afterwards 
in Asia, to the estate of the king of Pergamus. Such 
wealth and riches ruined the manners of the age, and 
overwhelmed the republic, which was simk in vices as 
in a common sewer. For hew did it happen that the 
Roman people demanded from the tribunes lands and 
subsistence, unless through the scarcity which they 
had by their luxury produced? Hence there arose the 
first and second sedition of the Gracchi, and a third, 
that of Apuleius Satuminus. From what cause did 
the equestrian order, being divided from the senate, 
domineer by virtue of the judiciary laws, if it was not 
from avarice, in order that the revenues of the state 
and trials of causes might be made a means of gain? 
Hence again it was that the privilege of citizenship was 
promised to the Latins, and hence were the arms of 
our allies raised against us. And what shall we say as 
to the wars with the slaves? How did they come upon 
us, but from the excessive number of slaves? Whence 
arose such armies of gladiators against their masters, 
if it was not that a profuse liberality, by granting 
shows to gain the favour of the populace, made that 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 257 

an art which was once but a punishment of enemies? 
And to touch upon more specious vices, did not the 
ambition for honours take its rise from the same excess 
of riches? Hence also proceeded the outrages of 
Marius, hence those of Siilla. The extravagant 
sumptuousness of banquets, too, and profuse largesses, 
were not they the effects of wealth, which must in time 
lead to want? This also stirred up Catiline against 
his country. Finally, whence did that insatiable desire 
of power and rule proceed, but from a superabimdance 
of riches ? This it was that armed Caesar and Pompey 
with fatal weapons for the destruction of the state. 

"Almost the whole world being now subdued, the 
Roman Empire was grown too great to be overthrown 
by any foreign power. Fortune, in consequence, 
envying the sovereign people of the earth, armed it 
to its own destruction. The outrages of Marius and 
Cinna had already made a sort of prelude within the 
city. The storm of Sulla had thundered even farther, 
but still within the bounds of Italy. The fury of 
Caesar and Pompey, as with a general deluge or con- 
flagration, overran the city, Italy, other countries and 
nations, and finally the whole empire wherever it 
extended; so that it cannot properly be called a civil 
war, or war with allies; neither can it be termed a 
foreign war; but it was rather a war consisting of all 
these, or even something more than a war. If we look 
at the leaders in it, the whole of the senators were on 
one side or the other; if we consider the armies, there 
were on one side eleven legions, and on the other 
eighteen; the entire flower and strength of the manhood 

17 



2S8 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

of Italy. If we contemplate the auxiliary forces of 
the allies, there were on one side levies of Gauls and 
Germans, on the other Deiotarus, Ariobarzanes, Tar- 
condimotus, Cotys, and all the force of Thrace, Cappa- 
docia, Cilicia, Macedonia, Greece, ^tolia, and all the 
East; if we regard the duration of the war, it was four 
years, a time short in proportion to the havoc made 
in it; if we attend to the space and groimd on which 
it was conducted, it arose within Italy, whence it 
spread into Gaul and Spain, and returning from the 
West, settled with its whole force on Epirus and 
Thessaly; hence it suddenly passed into Egypt, then 
turned towards Asia, next fell upon Africa, and at last 
wheeled back into Spain, where it at length found 
its termination. But the animosities of parties did 
not end with the war, nor subsided till the hatred of 
those who had been defeated satiated itself with the 
murder of the conqueror in the midst of the city and 
the senate. 

"The cause of this calamity was the same with 
that of all others, excessive good fortime. For in the 
consulship of Quintus Metellus and Lucius Afranius, 
when the majesty of Rome predominated throughout 
the world and Rome herself was celebrating, in the 
theatres of Pompey, her recent victories and triumphs 
over Pontus and Armenia, the overgrown power of 
Pompey, as is usual in similar cases, excited among the 
idle citizens a feeling of envy towards him. Metellus, 
discontented at the diminution of his triimiph over 
Crete, Cato, ever an enemy to those in power, calum- 
niated Pompey, and raised a clamour against his acts. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 259 

Resentment at such conduct drove Pompey to harsh 
measures, and impelled him to provide some support 
for his authority. Crassus happened at that time to be 
distinguished for family, wealth, and honour, but was 
desirous to have his power still greater. Caius Caesar 
had become eminent by his eloquence and spirit, and 
by his promotion to the consulate. Yet Pompey rose 
above them both. Cassar, therefore, being eager to 
acquire distinction, Crassus to increase what he had 
got, and Pompey to add to his, and all being equally 
covetous of power, they readily formed a compact 
to seize the government. Striving, accordingly, with 
their common forces each for his own advancement, 
Caesar took the provinces of Gaul, Crassus that of Asia, 
and Pompey that of Spain ; they had three vast armies 
and thus the empire of the world was now held by 
these leading personages. Their government extended 
through ten years, at the expiration of this period (for 
they had previously been kept in restraint by dread 
of one another) a rivalry broke forth between Caesar 
and Pompey, consequent on the death of Crassus 
among the Parthians, and that of Juha, who, being 
married to Pompey, maintained a good understanding 
between the son-in-law and father-in-law by means of 
this matrimonial bond. But now the power of Caesar 
was an object of jealousy to Pompey and the eminence 
of Pompey was offensive to Caesar. The one could 
not bear an equal, nor the other a superior. Sad to 
relate, they struggled for mastery, as if the resources 
of so great an empire would not suffice for two," 

The open rupture between Caesar on the 



26o THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

one side and Pompey and the Senate on the 
other came in the year 49 B.C. Caesar had been 
promised the consulship for the year 48 B.C., 
but fear of the powerful position in which 
Caesar would be placed if put in possession of 
the highest civil office of the state, while 
still holding his influence over his veteran 
army, together with distrust of Caesar's 
motives and ambitions, caused great opposi- 
tion to this plan to develop at Rome. 

Caesar, however, had his active partisans 
at Rome, among the most energetic being 
the tribunes Gaius Curio, Mark Antony, and 
Gaius Cassius. The former of these, a man 
of dissolute character and great abilities as a 
politician, proposed to the Senate a resolution 
calling upon both Caesar and Pompey to 
resign their provinces. 

Upon the passage of this resolution by the 
Senate, by a vote of three hundred to seventy, 
Pompey began to raise troops without the 
proper legal authority, and Caesar refused to 
surrender his province, or to appear before the 
Senate without the protection of his army. 
Caesar, however, sent to the Senate an offer 
to resign the governorship of Transalpine Gaul 
and to reduce the size of his army from ten 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 261 

legions to two, if the Senate would agree 
that he should retain the government of 
Cisalpine Gaul and the two remaining legions 
until after the consular election of 48 B.C. 
This offer was rejected by the Senate, who then 
adopted a motion ordering Csesav to disband 
his army and resign his province within a 
fixed time under penalty of being declared 
guilty of high treason. This measure was 
vetoed by the tribunes, who, however, aban- 
doned their posts and fled to Caesar's camp 
upon Pompey bringing two legions of his 
soldiers into Rome. 

Caesar, relying upon the support of his 
veteran army and of the Transalpian Gauls, to 
whom, on his own authority and without any 
color of legal right, he had granted the full 
civic rights of Roman citizens, now decided 
on a resort to force. 

The war was begtm by Caesar crossing the 
Rubicon. Pompey and his friends fled to 
Greece, where the war was largely fought out. 
The really decisive battle of the war was that 
of Pharsalus, fought on August 4, 48 B.C. 
The result of this encounter was the complete 
overthrow of Pompey, who fled to Egypt, 
where he was murdered by those who hoped 



262 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

in this manner to earn the gratitude of 
Caesar. Pompey's followers in Africa and 
Spain were soon afterwards put down. The 
last battle of the war, on March 17, 45 B.C., 
was that of Munda, where the army of 
Pompey's son was defeated and thirty thou- 
sand of his soldiers killed. 

Cassar entered Rome, to receive his last 
tritmiph in September, 45 B.C. The Roman 
republic was now overthrown; and the mere 
puerile expedient of giving a new name to 
the monarch, in place of the hated name 
of king, did not in any degree alter the truth 
of the matter. The new title of imperator^ or 
emperor, in fact, soon came to be used to 
designate a ruler of a higher rank, and pos- 
sessed of a greater degree of arbitrary power, 
than that of the monarch who ruled under 
the name of rex or king. The forms of 
government of the republic were still retained ; 
but the officers who were once the chosen 
representatives of a free people were now only 
the ministerial officers through whom a despot 
administered the affairs of his empire. Great- 
est degradation of all, the tribunes, once the 
embodiment of the rights of manhood, now 
became the especial tools of tyranical control. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 263 

Few people are unaffected by the glamour 
of success. It is this criterion alone which, 
as Thomas Moore writes, generally marks the 
distinction between the patriot and the 
traitor. 

"Rebellion! foul, dishonoring word, 

Whose wrongful blight so oft has stained 
The holiest cause that tongue or sword 

Of mortal ever lost or gained. 
How many a spirit, bom to bless, 

Hath simk beneath that withering name, 
Whom but a day's, an hour's success 

Had wafted to eternal fame! 
As exhalations, when they burst 
From the warm earth, if chilled at first, 
If checked in soaring from the plain, 
Darken to fogs and sink again; — 
But if they once triumphant spread 
Their wings above the moimtain-head. 
Become enthroned in upper air. 
And turn to sun-bright glories there ! " 

This success, so necessary to earn for the 
patriot or reformer the fame to which he is 
so justly entitled, is too often able to win 
admiration and respect also for the successful 
enemies of mankind. 

Few members of the human race ever 
deserved less praise from posterity (unless 



264 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

indeed, as a tribute to great but misdirected 
abilities) than Julius Caesar; but, neverthe- 
less, many tributes have been laid before the 
tomb of this destroyer of his country's 
liberties. For example, the historian Momm- 
sen, thus eulogizes Caesar: 

" Csesar, from the outset and as it were by hereditary 
right the head of the popular party, had for thirty 
years borne aloft its banner without ever changing or 
even so much as concealing his colors ; he remained 
democrat even when monarch. As he accepted with- 
out limitation, apart of course from the preposterous 
projects of Catiline and Clodius, the heritage of his 
party; as he displayed the bitterest, even personal, 
hatred to the aristocracy and the genuine aristocrats; 
and as he retained unchanged the essential ideas of 
Roman democracy, viz., alleviation of the burdens of 
debtors, transmarine colonization, gradual equaliza- 
tion of the differences of rights among the classes 
belonging to the State, emancipation of the executive 
power from the Senate; his monarchy was so little at 
variance with democracy, that democracy on the 
contrary only attained its completion and fulfillment 
by means of that monarchy. For his monarchy was 
not the Oriental despotism of divine right, but a mon- 
archy such as Gaius Gracchus wished to found, such 
as Pericles and Cromwell founded — the representation 
of the nation by the man in whom it puts supreme and 
unlimited confidence. The ideas which lay at the 
foundation of Ccesar's work were so far not strictly 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 265 

new; but to him belongs their realization, which after 
all is everywhere the main matter; and to him pertains 
the grandeur of execution, which would probably have 
surprised the brilliant projector himself if he could 
have seen it, and which has impressed, and will always 
impress, every one to whom it has been presented in 
the living reality or in the mirror of history — to what- 
ever historical epoch or whatever shade of politics he 
may belong — according to the measure of his ability 
to comprehend human and historical greatness, with 
deep and ever-deepening admiration." 

The laudations of Caesar, it is perhaps need- 
less to say, are always from men like Momm- 
sen who are absolutely devoid of any true 
sympathy for free government or popular 
rights. No more striking commentary on 
such men can be found than from comparing 
Mommsen's attack upon the revolutionary 
methods of Tiberius Gracchus with his de- 
fense of Cassar, given above. 

The truth of the matter is that Caesar was 
never at any time in his career a sincere 
member of the popular party. The people 
were his dupes, by whose aid he raised himself 
to the imperial power and destroyed the 
political liberties of his native state. His 
almost blasphemous use of the names of the 
great dead leaders and martyrs of the popular 



266 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

cause as cloaks to cover his own selfish and 
unpatriotic schemes is not the least of the 
indictments against him in the eyes of the 
true advocate of popular rights. In such 
actions, however, Caesar does not stand alone. 
In our politics of to-day nothing is more 
common for a politician than to try to cover 
his corruption by throwing over himself the 
mantle of some great national hero. The 
cloak of Jefferson in one political party, and 
of Lincoln in the other, are striven for by 
men who desire to use them solely for the 
purpose of covering their opposition to every- 
thing for which these men stood. 

Nor has C^sar been without imitators in 
every age, and in every republic, who, if the 
opportunity would only permit, desire above 
all else to imitate his life and success. The 
ability of Caesar, however, is seldom or never 
to be found in his imitators ; but the ambition 
itself is to be found somewhere among the 
politicians of every republic. There is also 
generally a strong influential class that woiild 
prefer the strong settled rule of one man to 
the constant political controversies with "their 
unsettled effect upon business." And the 
reality of a republic can always be destroyed 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 267 

without affecting its form, as was done in 
Rome by the centering of the powers of the 
different officials in Caesar, or more recently, 
in Mexico, by the many successive elections 
of Diaz to the presidency. 

The early and violent death of Cassar came 
before his plans were completed, and before 
he had assumed the title, as well as the 
authority, of a king or emperor. The ancient 
historian Appianus Alexandrinus has left a 
vivid account of the closing scene of Caesar's 
life, some extracts from which are here 
inserted : 

"A rumor was spread that there was an oracle of 
the Sibyls which declared that the Parthians could 
not be subdued by the Romans, imless they were 
commanded by a king. This made some talk publicly 
that in regard of other nations taxed under the Roman 
empire, there needed no scruple be made at the giving 
Caesar that title. He, having still refused it, hastened 
all he could to get out of the city where many envied 
him. But four days before the day appointed for his 
departure he was slain by his enemies in the palace, 
either out of malice to see him raised to such supreme 
felicity and height of command, or else (as themselves 
said) out of a desire to restore the commonwealth to 
its first estate; for they feared that, after having 
overcome these other nations, nothing could hinder 
him from making himself king; yet as it appears to 



268 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

me it was only for the name's sake they attempted all 
things; for in the thing itself there is no difference 
between dictator and king. 

"There were two chiefs of this conspiracy, the son 
of that Brutus whom Sulla put to death, M. Brutus 
Caspio, who came for refuge to Csesar himself after the 
battle of Pharsalus, and C. Cassius, who yielded to 
him the galleys in the Hellespont, both of Pompey's 
party, and with them was joined one of Caesar's most 
intimate friends, Decimus Brutus Albinus. 

"Having all decreed the palace the place of execu- 
tion, there were divers opinions concerning the manner 
of doing it; some being of opinion that they should 
likewise make away with Antony, Caesar's colleague, 
the most powerful of his friends, and well beloved 
of the soldiery. But Brutus opposed that, saying 
that it was only by killing Caesar, who was as a king, 
that they ought to seek for the glory of destroying 
tyrants; and that if they killed his friends too, men 
would impute the action to private enmity, and the 
faction of Pompey. This advice prevailing, they only 
expected the assembling of the Senate. Now the day 
before, Caesar being invited to sup with Lepidus, 
carried along with him Decimus Brutus Albinus; and 
during supper the question being proposed what 
death was best for man, some desiring one kind, and 
some another, he alone preferred the suddenest and 
most unexpected. Thus divining for himself, they 
fell to discourse of the morrow's affairs. 

"At the same time that C^sar went to the palace 
in his litter, one of his domestics, who had imderstood 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 269 

something of the conspiracy, came to find Calpumia; 
but without saying anything to her but that he must 
speak with C£esar about affairs of importance, he 
stayed, expecting his return from the Senate, because 
he did not know all the particulars ; his host of Cnidus, 
called Artemidorus, running to the palace to give him 
notice of it, came just at the moment of his being 
killed; another, as he sacrificed before the gate of the 
senate house, gave him a note of all the conspiracy; 
but he going in without reading it, it was after death 
found in his hands. As he came out of his litter, 
Lsenas, the same who before had spoken to Cassius, 
came to him, and entertained him a long time in 
private; which struck a damp into the chiefs of the 
conspiracy, the more because their conference was long; 
they already began to make signs to one another 
that they must now kill him before he arrested them; 
but in the sequel of the discourse, observing Lasnas 
to use rather the gesture of suppliant than accuser, 
they deferred it; till in the end, seeing him return 
thanks to Cssar, they took courage. 

"They left Trebonius at the gate to stop Antony 
under the pretense of discoursing some business with 
him; and as soon as Caesar was seated, the other con- 
spirators surrounded him according to custom, as 
friends, having each his dagger concealed. At the 
same time Attilius Cimber standing before him began 
to entreat him to grant the return of his brother who 
was an exile; and upon his refusal, under pretence of 
begging it with more humility, he took him by the 
robe, and, drawing it to him, hung about his neck, 



270 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

cr5iing out, 'Why do you delay, my friends?' There- 
upon Casca first of all reaching over his head, thought 
to strike his dagger into his throat, but wounded him 
only in the breast. Cassar, having disengaged himself 
from Cimber, caught hold of Casca's hand, leaped 
from his seat, and threw himself upon Casca with a 
wonderful force; but being at handy grips with him, 
another struck his dagger into his side, Cassius gave 
him a wound in the face, Brutus struck him quite 
through the thigh, Bucolianus wounded him behind 
the head, and he, like one enraged, and roaring like a 
savage beast, turned sometimes to one and sometimes 
to another; till strength failing him after the wound 
received from Brutus, he threw the skirt of his robe 
over his face and suffered himself gently to fall before 
Pompey's statue. They forebore not to give him many 
stabs after he was down; so that there were three 
and twenty woimds found in his body. And those 
that slew him were so eager that some of them, through 
vehemence, without thinking of it, wounded each 
other." 



CHAPTER XII 

PoST-MORTEM 

I^HE daggers of Brutus, Cassius, and their 
allies, on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., 
avenged the republic which they were too 
late to save. It thus chanced that the de- 
tails of the new imperial government were 
in the main arranged not by Julius Caesar 
but by his great-nephew, Gaius Octavius 
Cassar, who succeeded both to the private 
fortune and the public ofhce of the usurper. 
It was, however, only after another period 
of civil warfare that the new Caesar came 
into his possessions. 

The story of this civil war belongs to the 
history of the Roman empire rather than to 
that of the Roman republic, and will be 
referred to only briefly. Octavius Caesar 
was in lUyricum at the time of the assassina- 
tion of his uncle. Hastening to Rome, he 
found the city divided into two factions, one 
led by Brutus and Cassius, composed of 
those who desired to restore the republic; 
and the other, the old adherents of Caesar, 
under the leadership of Mark Antony. 

271 



272 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

Octavius had perhaps more to fear from 
the friends of his uncle than from his assas- 
sinators, as the latter, while they would 
have prevented him from assuming the politi- 
cal powers of his uncle, would probably not 
have opposed his taking possession of the 
latter's private fortune; while Mark Antony, 
who had possession of Caesar's papers and 
money, was probably intending to seize both 
the powers and property of Julius Caesar. 
Octavius Caesar, however, was possessed of a 
fair share both of his uncle's ability and 
perfidy, and proved himself more than a 
match for all his enemies, both in open warfare 
and in secret treachery. 

At first Octavius seemed inclined to enter 
into an alliance with Cicero and some of the 
other senators against Antony, but finding 
that Cicero sought to restore the republic 
and could not be used as his tool, Octavius 
reached an agreement with Antony, and the 
two, together with Lepidus, formed the second 
triumvirate. 

The immediate result of this coalition was 
another proscription, recalling the days of 
Sulla; the condemnation of all the assassi- 
nators of Caesar by the Senate ; and extensive 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 273 

military preparations to overthrow the armies 
which they had collected. 

The ancient historian Appian of Alexandria 
thus describes the terrors of the proscriptions : 

"The proscription being published, guards were 
forthwith placed at the gates and all the avenues of 
the city, at the seaports, and in the marshes, and in 
all places where there was any likelihood an unhappy 
man might shelter himself; besides, centurions were 
commanded abroad, to make search in the country, 
which was done all at an instant; so that both within 
and without the city many persons died suddenly 
several kinds of deaths. The streets were filled with 
the sad spectacle of heads carrying to the triumvirs, 
to receive the reward; and every step some person 
of quality, endeavoring to save himself, was met 
shamefully disguised; some running down into wells, 
and others into privies; some hiding themselves in 
the tops of the chimneys, or under the tiles, where 
they durst not utter a sigh or a groan; for they stood 
in more fear of their wives, or children, or freedmen, or 
slaves, or debtors, or neighbours that coveted some 
of their goods, than of the murderers themselves. 

"All private grudges were now discovered; and it 
was a strange change to see the prime men of the 
senate, consulars, praetors, tribunes, or pretenders to 
these dignities cast themselves at the feet of their 
slaves with tears in their eyes, begging and caressing 
them, calling them their saviours and patrons; and, 
which is most deplorable, not to be able with all these 

18 



274 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

submissions to obtain the least favour.- The most 
pernicious seditions and cruellest of wars never had 
anything in them so terrible as the calamities wherewith 
the city was now affrighted; for in war and tumult 
none but enemies were feared, and domestics were 
confided in ; whereas now domestics were more dreaded 
than enemies, because having no cause to fear for 
themselves, as in war or timiult, from familiars they 
became of a sudden persecutors; either out of a dis- 
sembled hate, or out of the hope of recompense pub- 
licly proposed, or because of some silver or gold hid 
in the house; so that no person found himself secure 
in his house, servants being ordinarily more sensible 
of profit than of the affection they owe to their masters; 
and though some might be found faithful and kind, 
yet they durst not assist a proscript, nor conceal him, 
nor so much as stay with him, for fear of falling into 
the same misfortime. 

"There was now much more danger than when the 
seventeen first proscribed were fallen upon; for then 
no person being publicly proscribed when on a sudden 
they saw some killed, one man defended another, for 
fear lest the same should happen to him. But after 
the proscription was published those comprised in 
it were presently forsaken by all the world; some that 
thought themselves secure, having their minds bent 
on profit, sought them to deliver them to the mur- 
derers, that they might have the reward; others 
pillaged the houses of those that had been killed, and 
with the present gain comforted themselves against 
the public misery. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 275 

"The most prudent and moderate, surprised at a 
thing so extraordinary, stood like men astonished, con- 
sidering that other cities turmoiled with divisions were 
re-established by the concord of their citizens ; whereas 
the Romans, already afflicted with civil dissensions, 
completed their ruin by this reconciliation. Some 
were killed defending themselves; others, who thought 
themselves not condemned, without any defence; some 
let themselves die with hunger, or hanged, or drowned 
themselves, or threw themselves headlong from the 
tops of houses, or cast themselves into the fire, or ran 
to meet their murderers; others again sought to pro- 
tract the time; and either hid themselves, or begged 
shamefully, or fled, or offered money to save their 
lives. Many likewise were slain contrary to the inten- 
tion of the triumvirs, either by mistake, or out of some 
particular grudge; but the bodies of the proscripts 
might be known from the others, because they wanted 
the head, which was cut off, and carried before the 
tribimal for orations, where they paid the reward. 
On the other side, wonderful examples were to be seen 
of the affection of wives, children, brethren and slaves; 
who found out a thousand inventions to save their 
husbands, fathers, brethren, or masters; died with 
them when they were discovered, or killed themselves 
upon those bodies they were not able to defend. 

"Of those that escaped the proscription, some pur- 
sued by their ill fortune, perished by shipwreck; others 
saved beyond all probability, came afterwards to exer- 
cise dignities in the city, to have command of armies 
and arrive at the honour of triiunph. Such wonderful 



276 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

things were to be seen in those days which do not 
happen in an ordinary dty, or in a small kingdom 
but in the mistress of the world, as well by sea as land; 
Providence disposing it so to reduce things to that 
excellent order wherein you now see them. Not but 
that Rome felt the same miseries under Sulla, and 
before him under Marius; and we have in writing of 
them reported many actions of cruelty, even to the 
depriving their enemies of burial; but what passed 
under the triumvirs made much more noise, because 
of the height of their reputations; and particularly 
the valour and good fortune of him, who having fixed 
the foundations of this empire, has left it to those of 
his race and name, even to this present." 

Among those murdered at this time was 
the greatest of all Roman orators, Marcus 
TuUius Cicero. 

An interesting incident connected with the 
raising of the money for the campaign against 
Brutus and Cassius was the refusal of the 
Roman women at this time to pay their share 
of the taxes demanded of the Roman citizens 
for the support of the armies to be raised 
against Brutus and Cassius. 

Hortensia, the daughter of a great orator, 
was their spokesman. The burden of her 
plea was that this was a family quarrel, a 
civil war, not one for the defense of Rome. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 277" 

"Let war with the Gauls or the Parthians 
come," she said, "and we shall not be inferior 
to our mothers in zeal for the common safety, 
but for civil wars may we never contribute 
nor even assist you against one another. 
Why should we pay taxes, when we have no 
part in the honors, the commands, the state- 
craft for which you contend against one. 
another with such harmful results?" 

The campaign resulted in the complete, 
destruction of all the armies opposed to the 
triumvirate, the most decisive battle of the 
campaign being that at Philippi. How An- 
tony and Octavius again quarreled after their 
common enemy had been overthrown, how the 
destruction of Antony resulted from his infat- 
uation for Cleopatra, and how Octavius at 
length secured the undisputed rule of the 
Roman world need not here be described. 

The date of the beginning of the reign of 
Octavius Caesar as Emperor of Rome is gen- 
erally taken as 31 B.C. Like his predecessor, 
Octavius Cassar endeavored to preserve as far 
as possible the empty forms of republican rule. 

In the overthrow of the early Roman king- 
dom the power of the kings had mainly 
passed to the consuls, but partially to other 



278 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

officials, and some of the powers possessed 
by the early consuls had been gradually taken 
away from them and given to other newly 
created officials, such as the censors and 
praetors. For centuries there had been a 
continued policy of division of powers; this 
policy was now suddenly reversed, and govern- 
mental powers of all kinds reunited in a single 
official. This was accomplished by confer- 
ring upon Octavius Cassar, for life, each of the 
various offices known in the government of 
the Roman republic. Octavius Cassar became 
life censor, life consul, and life tribune. The 
appointment of his colleagues in all these 
offices was likewise in his power. The cycle 
of governmental change had now been com- 
pleted, and the Roman emperor possessed 
all the old powers of the Roman kings. In 
the field of legislation it is indeed probable 
that the power of the emperor was greater 
than that of his early predecessors. 

"The old popular assemblies for a period after the 
establishment of the Empire still went through the 
form of passing acts, which had been prepared by 
the real governing power, but in addition to this 
the Emperor was given the power of direct legislation 
by his own authority. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 279 

" Laws which owed their force to the authority of the 
Emperor were known as Constitutiones and may be 
divided into four principal classes, as follows: 

"i. Edicts, which were public ordinances, of uni- 
versal application throughout the Empire. These 
had the authority of laws, inasmuch as they were 
generally enforced and applied to all. In the earlier 
reigns they were frequently renewed, and they derived 
their authority from the Emperor as the praetorian 
edict did from the praetor. Gradually they came to 
be held as permanently binding the real ground of their 
permanent force, custom was overlooked, and the 
imperial authority was regarded as such groimd. 

"2. Decrees, which were decisions in judicial cases 
brought before the Emperor as final court of appeal. 
Inasmuch as they were interpretations of law, they 
were regarded as binding upon all courts. 

"3. Rescripts, which were decisions upon questions 
of law submitted by courts and private persons. They 
were closely connected with the pontifical interpreta- 
tions. 

"4. Mandates, which were directions to ofiicials 
in the exercise of their offices. These, by repetition 
in the various instructions sent out from time to time 
by the Emperor, became a source of general law. 
They were theoretically in force only during the life- 
time of the Emperor from which they proceeded; but 
they became of permanent force because of repetition 
and custom." (Lee's Historical Jurispriidence.) 

There are writers who look with favor 
upon this establishment of the Roman empire, 



28o THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

just as there are those of the same caliber 
who, if some form of a dictatorship should be 
substituted for our present republican form 
of government, would be loudest in their 
approval of the change. Dr. Hirschfeld, of 
the University of Berlin, gives us the follow- 
ing roseate picture of the benefits which Rome 
received from the change: 

" The reorganization of the government by Augustus, 
open to criticism as it is in many respects, was a blessing 
to the Roman empire. The view which prevailed under 
the republic, that the provinces had been conquered 
only to be sucked dry by senators and knights, govern- 
ors, and tax-farmers in league or in rivalry of greed 
(we have one example out of hundreds in Verres, con- 
demned to immortality by the eloquence of Cicero), 
this view was laid, aside with the advent of the empire, 
and even if extortion did not wholly cease in the sena- 
torial provinces, yet the provincial administration of 
the first two centuries a.d. is infinitely superior to the 
systematic spoliation of the republic. The governors 
are no longer masters armed with absolute authority, 
constrained to extort money as fast as possible from 
the provincials committed to their charge in order to 
meet debts contracted by their own extravagance and, 
more especially, by that bribery of the populace which 
was indispensable to their advancement. They are 
officials under strict control, drawing from the govern- 
ment salaries fully sufficient to their needs. It was a 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 281 

measure imperatively called for by the altered circum- 
stances of the time and fraught with most important 
consequences to create, as Augustus did, a class of 
salaried imperial officials and definitely break with the 
high-minded but wrong-minded principle of the repub- 
lic by which the higher posts were bestowed as hon- 
orary appointments, and none but subordinate officials 
were paid, thus branding the latter with the stigma of 
servitude, 

"It is true that the cautious reformer adopted into 
his new system of government the old names and the 
offices which had come down from republican times, 
with the exception of the censorship and the dictator- 
ship, which last had long been obsolete. But these 
were intended from the outset to lead but a phantom 
existence and to take no part in the great task of 
imperial administration. Augustus drew his own body 
of officials from the knightly class, and under the 
impretentious titles of proctu-ator and prasfect practi- 
cally committed the whole administration of the 
empire to their hands, reserving, apart from certain 
distinguished sinecures in Rome, and Italy, for the 
senators the preefecture of the city, all the great 
governorships except Egypt, and the highest com- 
mands in the army. The handsome salaries — varying 
in the later days of the empire from £600 to £3,600 
($3,000 to $18,000) — and the great influence attached 
to the procuratorial career, which opened the way to 
the lofty positions of prasfect of Egypt and commander 
of the praetorian guards at Rome, rendered the ^r''~ 
very desirable and highly esteemed 



282 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

"While the high-bom magistrates of the republic 
entered upon their one year's tenure of office without 
any training whatsoever, and were, of course, obliged 
to rely upon the knowledge and trustworthiness of the 
permanent staff of clerks, recorders and cashiers in 
their department, there grew up under the empire a 
professional class of government officials who, schooled 
by years of experience and continuance in office and 
supported by a numerous staff recruited from the 
imperial freedmen and slaves, were in a position to 
cope with the requirements of a world-wide empire. 
These procurators, some as govemors-in-chief of the 
smaller imperial provinces, some as assistants to the 
governors of the greater, watched over the interests 
of the public exchequer and the emperor's private 
property, or looked after the imperial buildings and 
aqueducts, the imperial games, the mint, the com 
supply of Rome, and the alimentary institutions, 
the legacies left to the emperors, their castles and 
demesnes in Italy and abroad, — in short, everything 
that fell within the vast and ever widening sphere 
of imperial government. Meanwhile the exchequer 
of the senate dwindled and dwindled, till it finally came 
to be merely the exchequer of the city of Rome." 

There is scarcely any event which takes 
place upon this earth which produces unmixed 
evil or unmixed good. There is some slight 
element of truth in some of the statements 
of the last quotation. There was some tem- 
porary restraint placed upon the dishonesty 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 283 

and cruelty of the Roman tax collectors ; and 
there was undoubtedly a permanent improve- 
ment in the ability of the men holding the 
minor positions under the Roman govern- 
ment, through the introduction of what may 
be called a civil-service system. But the 
contention that the establishment of the 
empire was for the benefit either of the Roman 
citizens or of the Roman subjects is too ridic- 
ulous to merit even a denial. To show the 
ridiculousness of such a statement it is only 
necessary to point to the history of the Roman 
empire during the half century following the 
death of Octavius Caesar. Corrupt as the 
administration of the government often was 
under the republic, and cruel as were the 
successful factional leaders on a few occasions, 
such conditions as existed in Rome under 
the emperors Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero 
could never have existed under the republic. 
The character of the Roman empire was a 
most anomalous one. In the history of the 
empire we find the unparalleled situation 
of an absolute despotism without any hered- 
itary nobility and even without any well- 
established principle as to the descent of the 
royal power to the children of the deceased 



284 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

emperor. Under the most despotic days of 
the empire any Roman citizen might rise 
to any position of power or dignity under the 
emperor; nay, more than this, any subject 
of the Roman empire, no matter how low his 
origin or condition in society, might be thrust, 
by a lucky turn of the wheel of fortune, into 
the imperial purple itself. 

The Roman emperors came from every 
strata of society, and from every portion of 
the Roman empire. At different times we 
see the son of a slave, a Syrian sun priest, a 
Dacian peasant, seated in the chair of the 
Caesars; but this state of affairs in no way 
alleviated or excused the evils which the 
empire brought upon its subjects. The ex- 
ploitation of the millions at the hands of 
a favored few is not rendered more defensible 
by the fact that any individual has the chance, 
by extraordinary ability, extraordinary dis- 
honesty, or extraordinary good fortune, to 
raise himself out of the ranks of the exploited 
into those of the exploiters. 

The history of Rome, therefore, cannot be 
so perverted as to teach the lesson which 
some seem to draw from it, that the substitu- 
tion of a despotism for popular rule may, 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 285 

under some circumstances, be a benefit to 
the community. It is never by the destruc- 
tion of Hberty that the evils of popular 
rule can be eliminated. In the past, in the 
present, and in the future, the only remedy 
for the evils of liberty is more liberty; and 
the lesson which should be learned from the 
fall of the Roman republic is that any coun- 
try, where the privileged classes are suffered 
to retain their unjust privileges at the expense 
of the community, must in the end suffer 
some such terrible penalty as that paid by 
Rome under the tyranny and misrule of the 
Roman empire. 



CHAPTER XIII 
The Comparison 

'T^HE comparisons between the history and 
problems of the Roman repubHc and 
those of our own country have been some- 
times directly referred to, sometimes merely 
indicated, in the course of this book. While 
it is hoped that the reader has been able to 
follow the train of ideas suggested by the 
author, and to apply the lessons taught by 
the story of the fall of the Roman republic to 
aid in the solution of the American problems 
of to-day, it is thought advisable, in this final 
chapter of the book, to combine and summa- 
rize the difficult problems of economics, civics, 
and politics anticipated in Roman experience. 
First of all comes the lesson, so often 
taught by Roman history, so often already 
referred to in this book, that political equality 
is never by itself sufficient to secure either the 
protection of the weaker members of society 
or the general welfare of the community. 
Political equality means nothing unless sup- 
plemented by laws which secure economic 
justice. 

286 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 287 

The oft-repeated cry that poHtics and busi- 
ness should be kept separate is the product of 
a shallow, unreasoning, or hypocritical mind — 
generally the latter. This cry is the argu- 
ment of the stand-patter, of the man who 
trembles for the existence of the United States 
Constitution and of American institutions 
when any proposal is made to pass a law in 
the interests of the mass of the community, 
but who can view with complacency the 
enactment of statutes for the benefit of certain 
favored classes. Economic problems and spe- 
cial privileges were among the greatest prob- 
lems and dangers in the Roman republic, as 
they are in America to-day. 

When we come to the exact form of the eco- 
nomic questions, differences, of course, begin 
to appear. Tariffs, trusts, regulation of com- 
merce, were never great political questions in 
the days of the Roman republic. The greatest 
source of scandal and class favoritism at Rome 
was to be found in the management and dis- 
tribution of the public lands. This particiilar 
problem was one which our country, for 
nearly a century of national existence, was 
able to handle, in the main, wisely and 
honestly. The great body of that vast 



288 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

expanse of rich farming land, which was once 
the greatest asset of the United States, was 
disposed of to actual settlers, who have 
played an important part in the development 
of our wonderful West. Recently, however, 
corruption even along this line has begun to 
manifest itself in America. Passing over the 
nimierous charges of actual corruption which 
have been made, it is to be regretted that the 
United States government has of late shown 
a decided disposition to favor great interests 
rather than ordinary individuals in the man- 
agement of the public resources. An ex- 
tremely indefensible discrimination is to be 
found in the act of July i, 1902, which estab- 
lished the form of civil government for the 
Philippine Islands. Section 15 of this act, in 
providing for the management of the public 
lands, provided that no more than sixteen 
hectares of such land can be disposed of to 
any one individual, while a corporation may 
acquire as much as 1,024 hectares. 

From the standpoint of pure governmental 
science the most interesting comparison be- 
tween Rome and the United States lies in the 
elaborate and complicated system of checks 
and balances to be found in each government. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 289 

The framers of each system seem generally 
to have been thinking more of securing perfect 
brakes than of installing sufficient operating 
power. It is a mere hackneyed remark to say 
that the most prominent characteristic of the 
work of the Federal Constitutional Conven- 
tion was the system of checks and balances 
it developed, while this same principle was 
carried to such an extreme in the organization 
of the Roman government that it almost 
seems strange to an outside observer that at 
times the resisting power of the "brakes" 
did not prove more powerful than the operat- 
ing power of the government, with the result 
of a total failure of all government, and chaos, 
or anarchy. 

The most interesting of the "checks" in the 
Roman government was the veto power of 
the tribunes — interesting alike for its con- 
temporary importance at Rome, and perhaps 
even more so for the great and strangely 
directed influence which it has had upon the 
later development of governmental institu- 
tions throughout the world. 

The veto power of the Roman tribune was 
an innovation in government. It was, how- 
ever, a political idea which was destined to 
Id 



290 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

take deep root, and to be copied by countries 
whose very beginnings were, as yet, far in the 
future. There is to-day no constitutional 
government in whose organization the veto 
power is not found in some form ; in the great 
majority of modern governments the veto 
power occupies a most prominent place. 

The modern veto power has departed far 
from that of the Roman tribune, both in 
practice and theory. The veto power of the 
latter was merely a check upon power; the 
modern veto power is both a check upon 
power and a positive power in the hands of 
the official to whom it is given. 

The Roman veto was given to an officer who 
had no power except of a negative character; 
it could be interposed against executive acts 
and judicial proceedings as well as against 
legislative enactments. 

The modern veto power is directed solely 
against legislative acts and is put in the hands 
of the executive department of the govern- 
ment. Against the legislative department it 
is a check, but to the executive department 
it is a grant of positive power. In the United 
States the veto is more a club in the hands of 
the executive department than a check upon 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 291 

the legislative. The veto power also tends 
to break down the dividing line between the 
executive and the legislative departments. 
In the United States the President and the 
governors of the different states in reality- 
constitute a third branch of the respective 
legislative departments . 

The story of the Gracchi is replete with 
suggestions of comparisons with modern con- 
ditions. The failure of these reformers was 
primarily due to the lack of steadfast perse- 
verance on the part of the mass of their 
followers. It is this same phenomenon which 
does more than any other to bring about the 
failure of needed and widely supported reforms 
at the present time in our country. It is 
always much easier to win the support of a 
majority of voters to a reform measure than 
it is to retain such majority during the tedious 
delays which the opponents of reform are so 
adept in producing. Delay is always the 
great weapon of the supporters of any special 
interest which is attacked. The beneficiaries 
from unfair discriminations or special inter- 
ests, and their allies, never desert the fight 
from weariness, no matter how long it may 
be continued; but once the first spell of 



292 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

enthusiasm has passed away, the supporters 
of the reform gradually drop by the wayside. 
How many times have we seen the people vote 
time after time in support of a certain reform 
only to weaken at the crisis, and allow the 
ultimate victory to rest with the supporters of 
special interests! For illustration we need 
only cite the long contest in the metropolis of 
the West for a fair deal to the people from the 
street-car companies, where after nine years 
of contest the majority of the voters, at the 
critical contest, deserted the mayor, who had 
resolutely stood for the principles for whidi 
the voters had declared year after year, and 
gave to the companies a contract giving them 
all that they had even dared to hope for. 

The deposition of the tribune Marcus 
Octavius is without question the first historical 
application of the principle of the recall of 
public officials. This precedent was never 
again followed at Rome, and the recall of 
public officers never became a part of the 
Roman political system. Such an expedient, 
in fact, cotild never have been necessary at 
Rome, except in very extreme cases, on 
account of the very short terms of office for 
which all Roman officials were elected. The 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 293 

only states of this country which follow the 
Roman example in this respect are some of the 
New England states. 

The actions of the Roman proletariat in so 
consistently supporting the grain laws of 
Gains Gracchus, and in so soon disregarding 
his proposals for the allotment of the public 
land, are very typical of the attitude of a 
vast element in every community. The too 
great concern for the present and the too 
great disregard for the future are among the 
greatest obstacles to be overcome by those 
who attempt to line up the people of any 
community in the support of true construc- 
tive reforms. 

Side by side with the lack of true proportion 
in the view taken by the majority of men, of 
the relative importance of different measures, 
stand the constant errors made by the people 
in their judgment of the character and objects 
of different politicians. 

The tribune Carbo, the successor of Tiberius 
Gracchus as the leader of the popular party, 
may stand as a typical representative of a 
never-changing type of politician. 

No one can read of this life without being 
inevitably reminded of some politician of his 



294 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

own acquaintance or locality. It is but 
another proof of how slowly human nature 
changes, despite the vast changes in the 
external conditions with which mankind is 
surrounded. 

The law proposed by Carbo furnished an 
illustration of that class of laws directed 
against the rich, so often brought forward by 
demagogues, not because of any justice in 
the law, not even because of any benefit 
which the law will confer upon the people 
at large, but merely for the purpose of 
winning popular favor and political office. 
Such laws are generally supported by un- 
restrained and indiscriminating abuse. It 
is the proposed laws and attacks of this 
character which generally lead to a reaction, 
and in the end work to the benefit of the 
classes against which they are directed. 

The whole story of Carbo is one well calcu- 
lated to present in vivid colors all that is 
lowest and most despicable. To the faults 
and errors already referred to must be added 
the charge of absolute insincerity. To Carbo 
the rights of the people and the popular cause 
were dear only as a means by which he could 
acquire power and money for himself. When 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 295 

it was for his interest, he became the servile 
tool of the senatorial party. America to-day 
has her full share of politicians who use popu- 
lar measures only as a ladder for their own 
rise; or, even worse, who seek the leadership 
of a popular cause with the premeditated 
purpose of betraying it, at the proper moment, 
to the special interests. Where the purpose 
at first is sincere, the advocate of the object 
frequently deserts the cause when greater 
gain to him may be had by a surrender. 

The impossibility of the voters being able 
to discriminate between the true reformer 
and the unscrupulous demagogue is shown 
time and again in the political history both 
of Rome and the United States. There has 
always been a class of politicians without 
character, without honesty, without any pre- 
tense of truthfulness, without any ability of 
a kind to be of value to the public, but pos- 
sessed of an almost superhuman ability to 
deceive the public and to advertise them- 
selves. Examples of this class may be found 
in Roman history in such men as Carbo 
and Caesar; striking examples in recent 
American history will readily occur to every 
one. Notably in municipal politics in the 



296 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

great American cities, this aspect often ap^ 
pears. 

It is not only in great but also in smaller 
things that we see the ever-recurring resem- 
blances between Roman and American condi- 
tions. Cicero's complaint, "Let me tell you 
that there is no class of people so harassed by 
every kind of unreasonable difficulty as 
candidates for office," finds a responsive 
chord in every modern American politician. 
His account of his campaign for the consulship 
at Rome, as well as the historical record of 
other Roman political contests, shows many 
points of similarity between the details of 
the problems and methods of ancient and 
modern political battles. 

Political expenditures, in the latter days of 
the Roman republic, had become an even 
greater evil than is the case in the United 
States to-day. It is interesting, though 
alarming, to note that the greater political 
freedom became at Rome, the greater became 
the amount of political expenditures and the 
greater the power of money in elections. A 
similar alarming phenomenon has recently 
been noticed in this country in the greater 
increase of political expenditures which have 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 297 

followed the introduction of the direct pri- 
maries, and the consequent greater difficulties 
of the candidate for office not possessed of a 
large fortune. 

Inniimerable other points of resemblance 
might be mentioned to complete the com- 
parison between Roman and American politi- 
cal conditions. A strong point in the Roman 
character (at least during the greater part of 
the republican period) is found in the fact 
that foreign hostilities always produced a 
cessation, or at least a laxation, of domestic 
political hostilities. This was in striking 
contrast with the general rule in Grecian 
cities, where one political faction or another 
would generally seize the opportunity offered 
by the external difficulties of their state to 
advance their selfish individual interests at 
the expense of the public. The public atti- 
tude in America has always resembled the 
Roman rather than the Grecian attitude. 
Perhaps this attitude in America has some- 
times been carried too far, and resulted in 
too great a degree of credit and support being 
given to the party in power, for victories won 
by the united efforts of members of all polit- 
ical parties in the country. 



298 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

The effect of a mere name, both in Rome 
and in the United States, has always been 
unduly great. The charge (even when en- 
tirely unsupported) that a Roman politician 
was aiming to make himself a king was gen- 
erally sufficient to drive him from power; 
though the Romans finally calmly submitted 
to the rule of an absolute ruler under the new 
title of emperor. The efficiency of denun- 
ciation by calling names, instead of by argu- 
ment, is known and made use of in American 
politics. 

The pretense of patriotism in America 
assumed by having one's self designated by a 
name of patriotic appellation — such as "Hon- 
est" John Doe, "Brave" Richard Roe, and 
the "Patriot" John Stiles — is but a parallel 
to the schemes of the ancient tricksters. Truly, 
there is nothing new under the sun, and as 
man so are republics of men — both alike in 
greatness and in littleness. 

There is slight opportunity for comparison 
between the Roman colonial system and 
that of our own country. It is true that of 
both alike it may be said the beginning of 
foreign conquest came as an accident, and the 
acquisition of territory beyond the seas found 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 299 

them unprepared for its government. Here, it 
is to be hoped, the resemblance will be found 
to have ceased. When Rome had once tasted 
the fruits of foreign conquest, the extension 
of such conquests became the great object of 
Roman ambition. It was not by accident 
but by deliberately planned wars of conquest 
that the so-called world empire of the Romans 
was acquired. 

With the United States the comparatively 
few and unimportant insular possessions are 
still a matter of secondary concern. But few 
of the citizens of this country give any 
thought or attention to these possessions, and 
many even favor their abandonment. 

Both Rome and the United States found 
the problem of reconciling foreign colonies 
with republican institutions a difficult one. 
The Roman administration of her colonies 
was always tinged with corruption and in- 
justice; and, unfortunately, our own insular 
rule has not been entirely free from these 
evils. A great trouble in the case of each 
republic was that she failed or refused to make 
any real effort to introduce her own principles 
of government into the government of her 
provinces. There is much more excuse for 



300 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

this failure in the case of Rome than in that 
of our own country. As was shown in the 
chapter on Roman legislative assemblies, her 
ignorance of the principle of representative 
legislative assemblies made the extension 
of free government over extended areas 
impossible, or at least very difficult. But 
our own system of local self-government is 
one adapted to any country, and capable of 
indefinite expansion. The highly centered 
bureaucracy of the Philippine government is 
one without precedent in our own country, 
and without any fitness for the Philippines or 
any other colony. The slight self-government 
given to the Filipinos is merely enough to call 
attention to that which is refused them. 
No successful government of these Islands, 
either by our country or by the Filipinos 
themselves, will ever be secured while all 
questions of government for so many diverse 
races are settled by a few high government 
officials at the capital — Manila. Particu- 
larly will this objectionable condition con- 
tinue so long as the places of authority are 
filled by men named from every portion of 
the country except that part most nearly 
associated with the destiny of the Islands. 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 301 

The system of rewarding political service — 
and that ofttimes of a questionable character 
— given in America to men who served ballot- 
box emergencies, and to men who hope to 
reward themselves by fruitful opportunity, 
must cease, or government in these outlying 
possessions will lead to internal revolt or exter- 
nal military imperialism. 

It is plainly to be seen that conditions in 
the United States of America have tended 
toward those of Rome which preceded the 
latter's downfall. Particularly true is this of 
latter-day conditions in the United States. 
The monopoly of Crassus in town lots in 
Rome — and the exclusive right to dictate 
the price of farm products by the Fabii and 
their successors, which produced riots in the 
country and uprisings in the cities — have 
their parallel in the "corners" of the, stock 
exchanges and grain houses of America, and 
in the monopoly in oil and its elements. 
These methods and the domination of legisla- 
tive bodies by these massive interests, the 
corrupting of the assemblies of the people 
and the defiling of the courts, have created a 
revolt in the hearts of the Americans and 
awakened an insurrection among the citizen- 



302 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

ship. These, if not abated by the govern- 
ment's action in controlHng these agencies 
or restraining with plenary punishment the 
perpetrators of the wrong, will surely repro- 
duce a parallel in the results which befell the 
Roman republic. Cicero has well said, 
"Governments, like all organized creations, 
have their time to perish and to fade. The 
same conduct of persecution or protection 
work on each alike in the final results" — a 
sure continuance of life, or a sure result of 
certain death. 

Let it be remembered that man is ever him- 
self and mankind ever human. No ill will be 
borne that can be overthrown. It will all 
return to the first principle of force — Byron 
puts it well — as the moral of all human 
tales: 

"First freedom, then glory; 
With that past — avarice — corruption — 
i Barbarism at last — 

And all of history's volumes vast 
Hath writ but one page." 

It has been the dream of those who in war 
fought for, and in peace strove for, a just 
republic in the United States, that the 
awakened conscience of a people educated 



ROME AND THE UNITED STATES 303 

anew under a Christian era would be a guar- 
antee against the repetition of those evils 
which harassed government and injured men 
in the days of the Roman republic. It is 
now seen that this dream is being to a most 
encouraging extent gratified. In America 
wrong is at last condemned because it is not 
right. Right is approved — for that it is 
right. Justice is praised and sustained be- 
cause it is just to do so, and the oppression 
of man resisted and despised because it is 
unworthy civilized man and in violation of 
the dictates of conscience speaking the voice 
of God. 

In this new era America is working out her 
destiny of equality of man and equity of 
mankind, and this by the methods of peaceful 
persuasion — dictated from the heart. War 
is abhorred and brotherhood of man cherished 
as a coming state of modern citizenship 
proving in all its effect the justice and right 
of the theory of the American republic 
founded on the assertion that "Just govern- 
ments derive their power from the consent of 
the governed." Education, bringing enlight- 
enment in all avenues of life's pursuits, is 
rapidly giving to the American man the 



304 THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 

assurance and security that his government 
will be perpetuated by its citizens, not 
destroyed — will be glorified as an ideal after 
which other nations and people may pattern. 

"Our Fathers' God! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 

Oh, make Thou us, through centuries long, 
In peace secure, in justice strong: 
Around our gift of freedom draw 
The safeguards of Thy righteous law; 
And, cast in some diviner mold, 
Let the new cycle shame the old." 



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